From opium to heroin

From opium to heroin - longer version

There was no heroin production to speak of during the mid 1970s, when opium production began to increase. In Pakistan, the main export market, the security service became involved in heroin refining and trafficking. With an epidemic of heroin injection the heroin laboratories were closed in the 1990s and moved across the border. Today, some 400 tonnes of heroin are being produced in Afghanistan, mainly for export but also supplying a growing domestic market made up of traumatised war widows, orphans, former combatants and the destitute. The biggest cohort of users are returning refugees who learnt the habit in camps inside Iran and Pakistan. There are an estimated 50,000 heroin injectors in Afghanistan today and at least three times as many opium users.