Afghanistan Times
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AT Monitoring Desk-KABUL: Number of drug addicts has soared in northern Balkh province, said a local official on Sunday.
The director of Balkh counternarcotics department, Abdul Rahim Oghli, while talking to Azadi Radio expressed his deep concerns over lack of drug addicts’ rehabilitation centers in the province and said that drug addiction has increased.
“Based on a survey conducted in 2009 there were some 80,000 drug addicts in the province, however, tens of thousands of others have started using drugs over the past five years,” he said. He added that 30 percent of the drug addicts in the province are women. He said that most of women drug addicts were from Dawlat Abad, Shortepa and Kaldar districts of the province.
Oghli termed insecurity, widespread unemployment as main reasons behind drug addiction of youth.
He said that there were only five rehabilitation centers in the province with total 260 beds. He added that five rehabilitation centers were not enough for treatment of some 125,000 drug addicts.
