President Karzai certainly has pressing political reasons to control the exponentially increasing

President Karzai certainly has pressing political reasons to control the exponentially increasing harvests of

opium poppies which are supplying his opposition with the wealth necessary to maintain militias, purchase

weaponry and threaten the stability of the country. But a new crisis is looming on the horizon which

Afghanistan has not had to deal with in the past: drug addiction and a lack of treatment facilities.

Interestingly, the Taliban government was quite successful in stopping opium production during the last year or

so of their rule, as this UK study shows. But with the overthrow of the Taliban, Afghanistan is now beginning

to experience a public health crisis of drug addition, which may be compounded with a rise in AIDS/HIV and

other diseases from shared needles.