Since September 11 and the subsequent drive to wipe out terrorism, many of us have developed what I call a "selective news filter" – war in Iraq, Middle East conflict, Iran's nuclear crisis and the likes are gradually failing to interest us.
Why? Perhaps it is because we are just sick of hearing of yet another bomb attack in Baghdad or because the current media coverage fails to show the "other" side of human suffering.
Thriving drug addiction is one such problem that remains neglected. After the collapse of the Taliban, opium use more than doubled in Afghanistan. In Iran heroin use per capita is the highest in the world, surpassing the US. Analysts say that this "opium epidemic" is a result of hopelessness and destruction brought by war.
Afghanistan: world's opium source
Over 90 per cent of world's opium originates in Afghanistan and 60 per cent of it transits through Iran on the way to Russia and Europe.
While the war on terror rages, Afghanistan's opium production continues to boom in southern provinces like Kandahar, rising from roughly 12000 acres in 2004 to 32,000 acres in 2005, according to the recent Council of Foreign Relations report.
Although the poppy plantations are not new, the wide-spread use of the highly addictive drug is a novelty.
According to the first-ever nationwide survey on drug use in Afghanistan by the UN Office and Drugs and Crime (UNODC), there are nearly 50,000 heroin users in the country as a whole, and an additional 150,000 who use opium (unrefined precursor to heroin).
Experts say farmers are rebuilding their inventory from 2000-2001, when the Taliban, then in control of Afghanistan, imposed a brief moratorium on production (but not on opium exports).
Entire villages are turning into junkie havens. Mothers take opium to ease muscle pains from long working days in the fields, while giving the drug to their children to keep them quiet.
In the Times report Elizabeth Bayer, formerly from the UNODC, says: "There is no education, no awareness of the harm that opium causes. People here have been traumatised. If they can find something to relieve the pain, they will take it."
Boredom and desperation
It is this symptom of destruction – both physical and mental – that continues to push millions in the war-ravaged Middle East to "drug relief".
In Iraq, for example, drug smuggling has become income for many in the lawless environment, as well as a quick escape from the pain of everyday life.
Figures compiled by Iraq's health ministry last year estimated that Kerbala alone had almost 1000 addicts. British-controlled Amara, a smaller city of 300,000 near the Iranian border, had 500.
"We don't have updated figures yet, but we would say that in the past year those figures have probably doubled," said Sarwan Kamel Ali, the head of the health ministry's new anti-drugs programme, reported The Telegraph .
"In the old days people would take pharmaceutical drugs. Now they take ones like heroin as well," he added.
However, it is neighbouring Iran that is reaching an alarming level of drug use. The Washington Post reports that Iran has the world's highest per capita number of opium addicts, with over three million drug abusers, most addicted to heroin. In comparison, Australia has an estimated 113,000 heroin addicts.
After the Bam earthquake in 2003, among the emergency supplies brought in was methadone, a synthetic drug used to treat heroin and morphine addicts.
Experts say those affected most are the millions of unemployed Iranians and youth, battling to survive under the oppressive restrictions from the Islamic Government and basij, or civilian morals police.
Least of concern
It is unlikely that the thriving drug addiction is on the top of the agenda for the leaders of Afghanistan or Iraq, who are battling to contain insurgent violence and sectarian divisions. Much less is it a concern in Iran, which is too preoccupied with its nuclear developments.
And while millions become hooked on the heroin needle, the rest of the world tunes out when the news of a Baghdad bomb explosion flashes on TV.
Perhaps the words this young Afghani addict quoted by the Time magazine can awaken some: "This is a big problem…much worse than terrorism or the Taliban. In war, if the enemy kills you, you die once. But addiction kills the future."
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