Shan acknowledge growing drug scourge in its part of Myanmar

Filed under: Drug Addiction

Myanmar's Shan ethnic group has acknowledged that opium production and sales as well as drug addiction have increased in its areas in past years, making eradication of the narcotics trade a priority in the peace process with the government.
Drug Addiction – Yahoo! News Search Results

Chasing the Dragon By Aziz Sanghur – Drug production for Pakistan’s domestic market is estimated at close to .5 billion. It appears that only three percent of the gross profits from the illegal opium industry remain within Pakistan. The number of drug users in Pakistan has gone up from 50000 in 1980 to 8.1 million in 2011. Every year at least 50000 more people get addicted to different kinds of drugs. On average, an addict spends between Rs3,000 and Rs3,300 on drugs in Pakistan. Drug use in Pakistan should be understood in reference to its location next to Afghanistan which is the biggest producer and exporter of opium. The quantity of opium consumed in Pakistan had gone up to 80 million tonnes. This is more than the quantity consumed in India (67 million tonnes). More than 80 per cent of addicts confined in Italy are Pakistanis. Most people living in poverty-stricken areas of the country got addicted to drugs because some of their elders had been addicts throughout their lives. “Most people get the habit by watching their elders while growing up. Drug abuse, and particularly heroin addiction, has been spreading in Pakistan at a fast rate since the late Seventies. It has now become a serious social problem, which is probably going to stay. There is no pushbutton solution for its control and eradication. Pakistan is today notorious for many things, but in the last 20 years, drug production and addiction has increasingly become just one of them. The issue of drug addiction is often overshadowed by the many …