Unreported World - Channel 4

[Jules]

Shocking.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-world/

[wastedyouth]

Just watched it and your right it was shocking it makes you feel so selfish for wanting to use heroin just to get a high when there is 3yr old toddlers in afganistan been given it simply for pain.  To think that heroin is cheeper than simple pain relief drugs proberly like paractamol is shocking how can we allow this to go on you.  One wee boy paid £1 for a gram of heroin, thats how cheep it is and its proberly 100 times stronger than what we have in this country.  It just seems alian to me give a toddler opium, but as a mother i know on the other hand i could not watch my child in pain daily, so what would you do.  The countries obviously needs acsess to pain releif as a majority were using the drug simply for pain for injories that had happend in the war.  I just wonder if some of the chilren that were given it at the age of 3 resent their parents for giving it to them in the first place or has it just become so normal now, because at three, you were not given the choice whether to use or not use.  It is a really sad situation to see, i think that the parents need to be educated more, but maybe thats just nieve on my part maybe there is no other way.
Sad
WY

[Lindyloo]

I remember reading some time ago that parents in Afghanistan - uneducated country people, for the most part, mainly opium farmers - also gave their children opium to dull the hunger pains they feel, them being so poor that food was a luxury and on many occasions they had to go without.  The opium obviously lessened the pangs they felt through lack of food.  The disparity between what they used it for there, as opposed to here was absolutely shocking.

[derek d j]

 Using opium to dope children was common practice amongst factory workers in the industrial north until the 2nd World War.  If both parents worked 12 hour shifts..well, it was cheap and efficient way to keep the kids quiet while mamma was away.  You can still talk to old folk who spent most of their childhoods on the nod.
 Wonder if i'd dope the howling little bastard next door were i not so civilised.
 

[garstang]

As derek states - up until 1906 products containing opium were the mainstay of many corner stores and opium was seen as a cure all for young and old. If you can get hold of a copy read Narcomania by Marek Kohn.
P.