South Asia drug use increasing

Business Asia, March 3, 2000

South Asia's proximity to Afghanistan and Myanmar, the world's largest producers of opium, has led to a rapid rise in drug abuse in the region, according to a new report.

The annual report of the United Nations-aided International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said there appeared to be millions of abusers in the region, where use of heroin and synthetic drugs is growing quickly.

"South Asia is wedged between the world's two main opiate producing areas, Afghanistan and Myanmar," said Renate Ehmer, the regional representative of the United Nations Drug Control Programme.

"The transit trafficking of drugs has led to a rise in drug abuse in South Asia," she added. "We believe that there are over four million drug users in the region."

Bumper opium harvests in Afghanistan have increased the supply of heroin -- which is derived from opium -- in South Asia, the Vienna-based drug control body's report said.

Most of this will be transported through South Asian countries, he said.

A UN Population Fund official said last November that the number of AIDS patients in India alone would triple to 12 million in 2000 from the current estimate of four million.

Most of the opium cultivated in India is grown in fields deep within the heavily forested and far-flung northeastern states, where the country's drug abuse problem is most severe. These regions also have the highest number of AIDS sufferers.

In the early 1990s, India had almost 2.2 million drug abusers, more than 40,000 of them in the northeastern states. More recent official estimates for the number of drug abusers in the country are not available.