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Oct
24
2007KARZAI DODGES LONDON’S AFGHAN HEROIN HEARTLAND
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Feel-Good Publicity Dispensed Near Users’ Hell
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Habit of choice: addict’s handmade pipe helps make a little heroin go a long way
Skyreporter is in London, where President Hamid Karzai has dropped in for meetings with the Queen and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Not that we expect to see the Afghan leader in person: we’re on a side street a few minutes’ walk – and a world away - from Brown’s residence at No. 10 Downing Street.
A forty-year-old heroin addict, who we’ll call Mazza, is showing us a pipe he’s crafted from scraps of glass tubing. “Me, I smoke the stuff,” he says, displaying a palm-full of powder he purchased an hour before for nine pounds. “From Afghanistan, they tell me. Pretty pure, about forty per cent.
“It’s strong enough that if I banged (injected) it, I’d be really messed up. This way it lasts longer. Just a little at a time, then maybe a hit of crack if I find a partner.
“This heroin – smoke some of that, and I can cope, man. I can cope with living on the street. I can lie down right here and not have a care. You just don’t care about anything. You’re out of it.”
Mazza’s delirium is the demand end of the Afghan heroin trade. Up to ninety per cent of heroin refined from Afghanistan’s opium crop is sold and consumed in European cities and towns.
The UN estimates that more Afghan land is used to produce drugs than Bolivia, Peru and Columbia combined. In 2007, the poppy fields produced more than 8,000 tonnes of opium. If the entire crop could be refined, according to US State Department estimates, it would yield $38 billion worth of heroin.
The dramatic growth of the industry stems not only from the dependencies of addicts like Mazza, but from the industrial-strength denial practiced by politicians like Karzai and Brown – and, of course, the overlord of the current multi-national intervention in Afghanistan, the Bush administration.
For instance, last week the US general who heads the NATO/ISAF force, Dan McNeill, went on at length to journalists in Kabul about the heroin menace, while carefully avoiding the issue of traffickers. As skyreporter has pointed out previously, the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s website features plenty of fugitive South American druglords, but not a single prominent official of Hamid Karzai’s ruling circle.
This, despite admissions by figures like McNeill that heroin profits are corrupting the regime. The Afghan president himself seems incapable of even whispering the word “traffickers.” Not surprising, given that several of his key political allies have been linked to the drug underworld.
As for Gordon Brown and the British authorities, denial is a moveable feast. In Afghanistan, the British Embassy continues to back Karzai’s rogue Attorney General, Abdul Jabar Sabet, the man who triggered the Kabul Airport trafficking scandal (see our AFGHAN HEROIN series of film reports and articles in Recent Stories).
Meantime in Britain, lawmen who question the government’s losing battle against heroin abuse risk being rudely slapped down and silenced. Witness last week’s official opprobrium directed at the Chief Constable of North Wales, Richard Brunstrom.
The chief had had the temerity to suggest that it might be time for Britain to debate an end to “prohibition” style drug policies, and cease the “failed” war on illegal narcotics. Within days of his thesis becoming public, the chief was forced to forego media interviews – such was the furore caused by openly discussing Britain’s drug plague.
Mazza chuckles at the controversy. “The big people, they don’t like to even admit we exist,” he says. “’Put ‘em in a hostel,’ they say. I think they’d really be best pleased if we just hurried on up and overdosed, know what I mean?”
British authorities claim the UK has “committed” more than a billion pounds to Afghanistan since 2001. They say Britain will spend another 270 billion pounds to try to halt opium production.
Mazza shakes his head, and shuffles off for his next buy, his own dose of Kabul’s biggest export. Total cost, nine pounds.
“Shopliftin’, man. Shopliftin’ pays my way…”
The Afghan president will spend four days in London.
If legalizing hard-core drugs is what you mean by "controlled decriminalization", I strongly disagree with you. Heroin and Crack can addict the user on the first to third use. Heroin addicts are easily agitated when its time for their fix, whether its heroin or methadone. As the drug makes them unable to work, they resort to theft or selling drugs to support their habit. They can easily cross the line and become violent.
A couple of decades back, I worked in the psychological unit of a county jail. At that time, 95% of the crimes that were committed were drug related. The majority were for selling, theft, armed robbery, and assault.
Part of my job was processing the intake paperwork for drug analysis on people who were on probation or parole. If you were a diminutive female and the only thing between you and a heroin addict, who knows he is going to fail the test and will be going back to jail because he has slipped-up and who outweighs you by 60 lbs. - is a desk and a button to push for help - well, you might have a different opinion.
Young people experiment. Its part of growing up. If hard core drugs are legalized, then there just might be a greater tendency for them to try them. Many of them won't be able to walk away from that first use.
Legalizing these drugs will unleash upon society a nightmare with no end.
Is Mazza living on the streets because he is a heroin addict? If so, I find his "chuckle" at the controversy offensive.
Well Bonny lets turn that one around on you. By keeping the commodity illegal, its profit margin makes it the business to be in, people are lining up to sell the stuff even though chances are you will go to jail or, be killed by rival dealers. While this causes a user to steal, rob or even kill to support a habit. Prohibition of drugs! We have unleashed on society a nightmare of violence, crime and death with no end. All for what??
Kamikazee. If heroin is legalized - the price will go up. This is capitalism - some corporation will make big bucks off of it. The user still has to find a way to pay for it, the crime will continue. If governments start giving out free heroin, funding has to be provided to pay for it. That means that programs to help poor people will be cut so that funding will be available for the free heroin. So, there will be even more victims because of heroin - the children of poor families who won't get medical attention, food, etc. There will be more users because the drug is legal, that means more crime. Have you ever watched a heroin addict going through detoxification? I mean the real deal, not the hollywood version. Its a horrifying sight. How they even live through it is a miracle. Legal heroin equals more junkies, more suffering.
Who said anything about govt sponsored free heroin? I dont know what the answer is, but I love the way everyone can moralize keeping drugs illegal. Hopefully one day we can realize govt drug policy doesnt create addicts. It creates an inflated price for commodities. Have you heard of prohibition of alcohol. Can you see any resemblances? High price for the commodity, violance to control distribution etc. Could a sin tax be placed on govt sold drugs? Wait they do that with alcohol and cigarettes already I just find it a bit hipocritical thats all.
Kamikazee, from what I've read, "Controlled Decriminialization" includes programs to provide heroin to addicts. Whether or not you legalize heroin, the addict will not be able to pay for it. Unless, of course, they're rich. You won't be able to find any pharmaceutical companies to process it because of the financial liabilities from law suits. If you let the drug growers continue to process it, there will still be legal liabilities because of quality differences. Heroin is a drug that takes lives. Most addicts don't live past 50. I'm not cold hearted, just practical. This is a lose, lose situation. I feel that the fields in Afghanistan should be sprayed and the poppies eradicated.
So, with this post I now retire from the world of blogging. It has been enlightening, interesting, and fun.
four decades and a trillion tax dollars and 37 million non violent drug offenses and we are no closer to erradicating the drug problem.
Al Capone------ Pablo Escobar same solution cut off their revenue source end prohibition. The artificially inflated price of the commodity whether it be drugs, tires, soap what ever will drop with legalization.