Featured Articles: Dangers of Heroin Abuse Extend Far Beyond Damage to Individual Users

By Hugh C. McBride

It’s hardly a secret that heroin is an extremely dangerous drug, with the potential to inflict considerable physical, social and emotional damage on those who abuse or become addicted to it.

But acknowledging the many ways in which heroin abuse can harm an individual is just one step toward understanding the true depth and breadth of this drug’s capacity for destruction.

As a number of recent news reports have indicated, the scourge of heroin abuse has repercussions that resonate far beyond the lives of street dealers and individual addicts.

As the drug winds its way along a circuitous path from the opium fields of Afghanistan to the bloodstreams of users around the globe, heroin contributes to myriad social ills, including an epidemic of death and disease, the funding of terrorists and other criminals, and the continued destabilization of one of the world’s most volatile regions.

Widespread Death & Destruction

On Oct. 21, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released a report detailing the massive and profound negative impact of the Afghan poppy trade (the source of an estimated 90 percent of the world’s opium supply).

The following description of the report comes from the UNODC website:

In a new report, Addiction, Crime and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium, UNODC shows the devastating consequences that the 900 tons of opium and 375 tons of heroin that are trafficked from Afghanistan every year have on the health and security of countries along the Balkan and Eurasian drug routes, of countries in Europe, of China, India and the Russian Federation.

It documents how the world's deadliest drug has created a market worth $65 billion, catering to 15 million addicts, causing up to 100,000 deaths per year, spreading HIV at an unprecedented rate and, not least, funding criminal groups, insurgents and terrorists.

The UNODC report identifies Afghan opium as the world’s deadliest drug, and bemoans the fact that less than 2 percent of an estimated annual output of 3,500 tons is seized by local authorities before leaving the country for worldwide distribution.

"We have identified the global consequences of the Afghan opium trade,” UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in a press release announcing the publication of the report. “The Afghanistan/Pakistan border region has turned into the world's largest free trade zone in anything and everything that is illicit -- drugs of course, but also weapons, bomb-making equipment, chemical precursors, drug money, even people and migrants."

A Global Crisis

As Costa’s comments indicate, it is difficult to overestimate the social and economic cost of the global opium/heroin market.

Heroin abuse and addiction continue to plague communities throughout the world, while the profits generated by the sale of both opium and heroin are often used to fund criminal enterprises and terrorist organizations such as the Taliban. The UNODC report estimated that the opium/heroin trade contributes $400 million to the Taliban.

"The Silk Route, turned into a heroin route, is carving out a path of death and violence through one of the world's most strategic yet volatile regions," Costa said in an Oct. 21 CNN article.

Of course, the fundamental economic principle of supply and demand indicates that Afghanistan and Pakistan are hardly the only nations to blame for the global heroin epidemic.

The following statistics on heroin use in the United States were reported in the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health:

• An estimated 3.7 million people in the United States have used heroin at some time in their lives, and more than 119,000 survey respondents reported using the drug within the month preceding the survey.
• An estimated 314,000 Americans used heroin in the past year, with the highest number of those users coming from the 26-and-above age demographic.
• Between 1995 and 2002, the annual number of new heroin users ranged from 121,000 to 164,000.
• In 2003, 57.4 percent of past year heroin users were classified with dependence on or abuse of heroin, and an estimated 281,000 persons received treatment for heroin abuse.

Ethan Nadelmann, founding executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, acknowledged the impact of worldwide demand for heroin in the Oct. 21 CNN article. "If Afghanistan were suddenly wiped out as a producer of opium -- by bad weather or a blight or eradication efforts -- other parts of the world would simply emerge as new producers,” he told CNN.

Ending the Epidemic

Clearly, the struggle to rein in the distribution of opium and the manufacture and sale of heroin is far from a simple matter. But it is just as clear that reduced demand would significantly limit the financial incentive of supplying these dangerous substances throughout the world.

If you or someone you care about is struggling to overcome an addiction to heroin, know that a wide range of treatment options are available to help you. From medically assisted methadone maintenance programs to more traditional therapy-based residential treatment facilities, opportunities to end heroin addiction are just a phone call or mouse-click away.

Your decision alone won’t necessarily save the world, but by ridding yourself of the chains of addiction, you will cease being a part of the problem, and can put yourself in a position to once again be a factor for positive change.