TC

Vision

Voiceover

SYNC

10.00.02

The illegal drug trade is now worth $400 billion a year, or 8% of world trade. It feeds some 200 million habits. In some developing countries, drug production shapes politics and even funds civil war. Can addiction be tackled or should global strategies accept a degree of drug use in our societies?

00.33 Can the 'war on drugs' ever be won?

00.40

Title

THE GLOBAL ADDICTION

00.57

It's party night in Daytona beach, USA. The name of the game is to starve the brain of oxygen - or 'get high.'  The poison? Alcohol, marijuana, laughing gas or crack.

Natsof party

01.30

'People are strange' sang Jim Morrison. Polytoxicomania, the abuse of many substances at once, is a youthful answer to modern life. River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain, who both died drug related deaths, are role models.

01.48

In the 1980's casual cocaine use in the middle and upper classes took off, and crack cocaine emerged as a smokable, more potent form of cocaine, used mostly by poorer addicts.

02.10

America now has 20 million drug addicts - the highest addiction rate in the world.

02.22

Drugs are said to have put 50% of America's prison inmates behind bars. Crack cocaine in particular has driven young men into jail.

02.34

SYNC Glen McGinniss, Death Row prisoner

It takes you from being this big, it draws you up and then you stop wanting to take care of your hair and you stop caring about your little face. It just seems like you don't care no more.

02.50

The man inside this house was released from prison two hours ago. He's now making crack out of cocaine.

02.58

SYNC Pit

You filter it through a cigarette carton. Why? Because pure cotton has too many small fibres that will go in the syringe and give you cotton fever. Then...in the main line. You got that? Done. You're high.

03.33

Marijuana is the most widely used illicit substance in the world. Yet in the past ten years world wide opium production has trebled. It comes from the seeds of the poppy and is further refined to produce heroin. The production of coca leaves has also doubled - the South American shrub used to make cocaine.

Colombia and Mexico are the world's third largest producers of heroin and Colombia dominates cocaine production and distribution to the United States.

04.07

‘Pepe', drug trafficker

As long as there are addicts in America they won't stop the drug business, and if they do shut it down in Colombia it will start up elsewhere.

04.16

So says a Colombian drug trafficker who claims he makes $4,000 a month. By Colombian standards, that's a fortune.

04.27

In 1989, George Bush announced his 'war on drugs' - to cost nearly $8 billion. 70% would go on aggressive drug law enforcement, with sanctions for non-cooperative countries.

04.41

For Colombia, where guerrillas protect the coca growers and drug cartels buy off politicians, this meant a bloody war of attrition. The army has been accused of gross human rights abuses in its efforts to stem the deadly flow of drugs.

05.01

Bodies are unloaded off a helicopter. The army says they are guerrillas who were running the drug industry. Of the eleven dead 9 had execution-style wounds to their heads. The crackdown on drugs has made it difficult to see where the war against the guerrillas ends and the war on drugs begins.

05.24

SYNC Colonel Pedraza, Colombian Army

Right now you are seeing the bodies of some of the famous cultivators of opium poppies, that illegal cultivation that the government has decided to eradicate in a determined fashion.

05.45

But hidden amongst maize plantations thousands of poppy fields litter the mountains. And deep in the jungle, coca growers process their leaves. It looks like a primitive operation. But this haul could become 90% pure heroin on US streets.

06.02

SYNC Anonymous Cocaine Grower

First you weigh the coca leaves and for every fifty gallon container of water you process six bundles of leaves. Then you've got to mix the leaves with water and ammonia. For that quantity, you must also put in 2 pounds of cement powder.

06.28

Aerial spraying is the newest weapon against growers. It relies on American planes, American herbicide, some $30 million dollars of US funding and American anti-narcotics units. The Colombian government hoped this would halve coca growing, but it hasn't changed the political chaos here, which allows drug production to thrive. Farmers claim spraying has only made them clear new swathes of rainforest to make way for their crop.

06.58

The mid1990's saw the arrest, surrender or death of key Colombian drug barons. But the region remains one of America's biggest drug problems and the war on drugs goes on.

07.18

Poppies bask in the evening sun, as Afghan farmers tend their deadly crop.  In contrast to Colombia, the US and the UN are virtually powerless to fight drug production here, and there is no government to enforce drug law. 07.37

Afghanistan takes second prize in world opium production, behind Burma. Porous borders with Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia make trafficking easy.

07.49

Ninety percent of Afghanistan's crop is grown on land controlled by the Islamic Taliban militia.

07.57

Abdul and kids harvesting

Spring is a joyful time for growers like Abdul Waheed. Soon the heroin middlemen will arrive to buy his entire opium crop.

The village will make just enough money to survive another year.

08.13

SYNC Abdul Waheed, opium grower

It's got high value and we can get our food through it. We don't know what it's made into, or what happens to other people... we're just solving our problems and we need it.

08.30

Drug taking is against the laws of Islam, yet the ruling Taliban do more than tolerate opium production. In fact they levy a lucrative ten percent tax on the crop, which is used to fund their regime. The Taliban are not renowned for their co-operation with the imperialistic West, and  have little incentive to stop a trade they benefit from.

08.53

SYNC Abdul

We used to pay the tax before, but not since the years of Revolution and anarchy. Now the Taliban are collecting the tax again.

09.03

The Taliban do not like to be filmed. Nor do they like to be questioned on the dubious morality of taxing drug production.

09.12

Voice of Nabdullah Shams, Taliban Minister for Drug Control

This type of arrangement by the Taliban has been practised for hundreds of years.  Not only in Afghanistan, but in other Islamic countries.

09.23

With almost every Opium farm now under Taliban control, the United Nations has become dependent on Taliban cooperation. Gary Lewis heads the Drug Control Program in neighbouring Pakistan. He's been allowed to survey drug farms to project their yield. He has not been able to stop them.

09.43

SYNC Gary Lewis, UN Drug Control Programme

It's just as frustrating as seeing your son or daughter addicted to heroin, knowing they have the wherewithal  to choose to withdraw from that situation, but choose not to do it. And they have to be helped out of that.

10.07

The UN estimates the farmers could be persuaded to switch to other produce at a relatively low cost. Afghanistan's total farm income is less than $100 million a year. Drug farmers see little of the fortune made by crime barons who sell their crop.

10.25

But until the Taliban decide it's time for things to change, opium farming will remain a fact of life. In Abdul's village the children are already learning the craft of producing opium.

10.39

Islam-u-dine is only12 years old but he has no doubt what he'll be doing when he grows up.

10.45

Islam-u-dine

I have to grow opium...there are no schools to go to. What else could I do?

It is good for poor people, but not good for the rich.

11.04

Many Afghans, especially the Taliban, see little wrong in profiting from the West's insatiable appetite for heroin. The world's new major opium producing area is emerging at the nexus of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. It's known as the ‘Golden Crescent'.

11.37

This is the end of Ramadan - Islam's most holy month. The long days of fasting are finally over, and in Pakistan's poppy-growing region, Muslims smoke hashish and opium to celebrate. This would be anathema to the Taliban. But for the Pashtun tribes whose livelihood depends on the poppy, this is an ancestral, spiritual pursuit.

12.04

Before 1979, opium could be cultivated here legally. The Pakistani government bought the entire production for medicinal use. Since then, the government line here has changed completely. Now it actively persuades poppy growers to switch crops.

12.25

Today, three quarters of Pakistan's opium cultivation is on the other side of the 'Durand Line' - the disputed border with Afghanistan. And in the border areas, militant poppy farmers have little time for their government's 'Holy War' on drugs.

12.40

SYNC Fez Mohammed, Village Chief

We don't expect the government to fight us, we expect them to help us develop. If the government can build factories for us then it will be a matter of pride for the Pashtuns to stop growing poppy. We've been growing poppies for 30 years. Our major source of livelihood is first God, then opium.

13.09

In 1997 the UN vowed to end commercial opium and coca production globally in 10 years. Its anti-drug strategy has traditionally focused on crop substitution programmes. The UN and US have pumped millions of dollars into road construction, irrigation and nurseries such as this one here in Pakistan. Farmers have substituted opium with oranges. But the profits from growing opium remain 20 times higher.

13.42

In some areas the vicious cycle of drug production has been broken, but the hard-line poppy growers near the border with Afghanistan will not change the habit of a lifetime. No invader from Alexander the Great to Gengis Khan and beyond has been able to defeat the Pashtun. They say the government will never destroy their poppy crops.

14.07

SYNC Fez Mohammed, Village Chief

The Pashtun tribes were born of the same parents and they are ready to die in one trench because they have the same demand. You can't force our tribes to stop growing poppy.

14.20

And the Pashtun have the means to fight. In Pakistan's North Western Frontier Province, you can buy anything from pen guns, to rocket launchers. Throughout the world's drug producing areas, arms are easily available and affordable, and private armies protect the drug industry. By the age of ten every boy here has a gun - they're known as the jewellery of the Pashtun. But since Pakistan spends 80% of its budget on the military and servicing its debt, money for a dangerous war on drugs, is tight.

14.57

SYNC Nawaz Malik, Pakistan Narcotics Control Board

We need a lot more resources to strengthen anti-narcotics enforcement arrangements. Definitely we need a lot more force, we need helicopters, we need high-powered vehicles for them and weapons and communication equipment. That will enable them to put up a better fight.

15.25

But the Pakistani government is also criticised by outsiders as half hearted in its attempts to fight the drug barons. Whilst drug laws languish in parliament the government makes showcase examples of crop reduction. Here it is using a traditional meeting or jirga to try and convince local tribal elders that it's in their best interest to destroy the poppy crop. It's a carrot and stick process that can last months. But finally today an agreement is reached that certain poppy fields can be destroyed.

16.01

This operation is small. Sometimes there are 500 police. Clearly the government has targeted a farmer who's unable to fight back. Yet even he remains defiant, vowing to continue to grow poppy.

16.16

SYNC poppy Farmer

I say that the government should compensate me for this loss, because we have worked hard on this crop. The government must do something for us. If it doesn't, we will grow ten times more poppy next year.

16.36

Opium from the Golden Crescent makes its way 700km north to Kyrgyzstan.  Formerly part of the Soviet Union, this is a newly independent state of Central Asia. It's also the new opium smuggling route feeding the global market.

16.56

The Pamir Mountains are known as the roof of the world. Through them runs the old Silk Road, once the trade route between Asia and Europe. Before 1991, most narcotics from the Golden Crescent travelled to Europe along various routes through the Balkans. But now, the heroin produced in South West Asia also transits along the Silk Road, through countries struggling to build their economies.

17.24

This region has now become a top priority of the UN's Drug Control Programme.

17.30

SYNC Giorgio Giacomelli, Former UNDCP Chief

It is no coincidence that the Central Asian sub-region has evolved into a major transit point and a storage area for illicit opium, heroin and hashish shipment.

17.46

The UN has extracted pledges from all five Central Asian republics to join forces in an anti-drugs campaign.

But the addict populations in these countries are growing -Uzbekistan has 20,000, Krygyzstan 50,000, Kazakhstan 200,000...

18.07

Giacomelli

The silk road is gradually becoming the heroin road. I believe things will have to go worse before they start going better but they can start to go better if we are not discouraged and indeed continue in this effort to have a more concerted coherent and compatible action.

18.25

But despite the best efforts of the UN and the Central Asian authorities, the problem is getting worse. On the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, officers search as many as 200 vehicles a day. Most trucks are returning after delivering humanitarian aid to Tajikistan- at civil war since 1992.

18.47

Natsof Captain

18.48

But Kyrgys authorities say many are traffickers, who will try anything to get the drugs through.

18.55

SYNC Captain Abdurakhmanov

Drivers of these trucks normally try to hide the drugs in the back of the truck, inside tyres, the air filter, under the cabin, inside the heater, inside the engine. They also try to hide the drugs inside petrol tanks.

19.18

Central Asia has been as robust as it can in intercepting drugs, but it has scant resources.

19.25

Mj.General Askarbek Mameev

Kyrgyz Drug Control Commission

The only resource we have at the moment are trained dogs. However, because of the high altitude - 3500 to 4000 metres above sea level - after three searches the dogs are tired and can no longer work. Also, because the dogs sniff the drugs, they're also becoming addicts and they just can't work for a very long time.

19.52

Whilst drug growers can be targeted in the global war on drugs, what of the couriers, tempted to risk their freedom to make that one lucrative drop. 2 pounds of opium costs $100 in Afghanistan. It's worth $3,000 by the time it reaches Central Asian cities. It fetches $8,000 in Moscow. The Russian border beyond this village is closed to cameras. Guards there are said to be involved in drugs smuggling.

20.27

The drugs trade is carried on the backs of the poor and the desperate. People like Azarabek and Awazbek, who are now facing 15 years in jail.

20.40

Their crime was hauling this opium - 129 kilos - across treacherous mountain passes from Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan.

Originally there were eight in their party. Two turned back because of snow blindness. The other four escaped police capture.

21.01

SYNC Awazbek

I had no money and no work. I owed some money to other people, so I decided to solve all my problems at once. I feel very bad and I don't think that I will ever get over this mistake.

21.23

SYNC Azarabek

It's going to be hard. But, this is what has happened. There was nothing else to do. You have to feed your family and that's why I decided to take the risk, so that I could somehow support them. Fifty percent of people are doing the same thing. This is the only way for them to survive.

21.52

On the Thai-Burma border, another unwitting opium courier is caught. Thailand is the regional leader in fighting opium production.

22.01

MAP

But here in the Golden Triangle, where Burma, Thailand, China and Laos meet, the Thai efforts have been swamped. Burma produces 90% of South East Asian opium - it's the world's major producer - as well as half the world's heroin. With 1.27 million drug addicts Thailand imports opium from Burma to meet domestic demand.

22.34

Burma is now also manufacturing a new drug, which is flowing into Thailand. It's this evolving nature of the drug business which makes it hard to track. And parts of the border are impossible to police.

22.50

The new drug has hit the streets of Bangkok, a favourite of young ravers. 

22.56

It's called methamphetamine, which is a stimulant.

23.01

Police regularly raid the most popular clubs looking for the tiny pink pills, known in Thailand, as 'yaa baa' or mad medicine. Burma and China also have a problem with the drug, and it has already reached the streets of the US. Police here don't expect to find the drug, precisely because they make their raids visible. Young users now take yaa baa before they come clubbing.

23.29

Yaa baa pills

This year, the Golden Triangle will sell Thai workers, students, nightclub goers and others, 200 million of these tiny speed pills.

23.39

SYNC Bunchai

Taking lots of drugs... it's a pleasure - but I don't get enough rest. I see illusions... and I'm full of imagination.

23.59

As they use more, they become hyperactive, argumentative, aggressive, paranoid.

24.05

SYNC Dum

I never felt crazy - but sometimes I feel scared when I take a lot. I'm scared that someone is going to kill me. It's happened to me often.

24.18

SYNC Dr. Chris Beyrer, Epidemiologist, John Hopkins University

It can lead to this kind of psychotic paranoid state, and that is about as dangerous as a person can be.

24.29

man goes mad with machete

A young man with a machete goes mad, swinging wildly at anyone near him.

24.41

man with child hostage

A father takes his two year old hostage and tells the police he's about to murder the child.

24.54

In Thailand, the havoc caused by yaa baa has become a national emergency - but it can't be solved without Burma's help.

25.03

SYNC Dr. Chris Beyrer, Epidemiologist, John Hopkins University

There's a fundamental political resolution in Burma that's going to be necessary to start to deal with both the heroin problem and the amphetamine problem. I don't see that for any of these ethnic groups, unless there's some kind of real sustained development, that they're going to be able to get out of this industry.

25.22

But Burmese drug production has boomed under military rule since1989. Many view Rangoon's annual drug burnings with scepticism, believing the military is tolerant, even supportive, of mobile chemical plants that make yaa baa. Burma's leaders deny it, insisting they've recently destroyed tens of millions of tablets.

25.43

SYNC Win Aung, Foreign Minister, Burma

We are not supporting them, you know, we are not manufacturing them. We are even, you know, attacking all the problems at the grass roots.

Journalist's question: These are made in Burma, sir. These are made in Burma, these amphetamines.

Do you think so? Are they made here? You know, these factories can be made anywhere near the border area.

26.03

It could be that Burma's military can't control drug production and export across these hills. Yaa baa, like heroin, is made in ethnic minority strongholds along Burma's borders. As in Pakistan, the labs are guarded with private armies.

26.21

Weapons and 100,000 yaa baa pills were seized in this border ambush on key members of a drug cartel.

The Thai military shot dead two of the Burmese amphetamine traffickers, after one of their grenades blew up an army vehicle.

26.39

But for the most part those busted are small time dealers and users. As much victims as they are criminals.

26.52

This man claims he's addicted as his boss spiked drinking water with yaa baa, to make the workers more productive. But he too will end up in jail.

27.02

Thailand has little patience for Yaa baa dealers or addicts. This user has kidnapped a five-year-old boy...

To save the child, police shoot the user dead.

27.33

In all of the world's drug-producing regions the lack of sustainable development has meant that both drug-related crime and addiction are on a steep rise. In Pakistan for example, there were just 5,000 heroin addicts in 1980. Today, opium coming from Afghanistan has catapulted that figure to 1.5 million.

28.02

Neighbouring China has the same sorry tale. China had 70,000 drug addicts in 1989. Today it has more than half a million, particularly along its border with Burma. Most producing countries target drug pushers, leaving little or nothing for the care and counselling of addicts.

28.32

In fact drug abuse in China is seen as a crime in itself. The penalty: three to six months in a police detoxification centre. Police videotape faithfully documents the trauma inside these centres, as junkies are forced to dry out cold turkey. The fight against narcotics has now been declared a major national priority.

29.03

Despite an economic revolution, China's treatment of drug abuse is medieval.

29.09

SYNC anonymous drug addict

I've been there. It's unbearable. The police beat you up. Everyone beats each other. It's like a prison. Mentally it's too much to stand. As well as physical suffering, it's mental torture.

29.32

Japan has all the resources to deal with addiction, but addicts are still treated harshly here too. Usually they end up in psychiatric hospitals, like this one in Tokyo.

29.43

NATSOF doctors

Apparently she acted violently outside...

She tried to jump in front of a car...

29.50

The woman is 22, with a record of drug abuse, not mental illness.

29.57

It's a view of Japan outsiders rarely see, because the Japanese prefer to deny they have a drug problem.

She'll be locked up here, indefinitely. Her therapy might include an overdose of discipline, heavy sedation and electric shocks. Her case is filed away.

30.15

Japan's restless multitudes are addicted to amphetamines, or ‘speed'.

30.27

This love-affair with amphetamines goes back to the Second World war.

Soldiers, factory workers - even nurses - were forced to take stimulants to stretch the nation's fighting capacity.

30.41

At the end of the war, pharmaceutical companies flooded the market with amphetamines.

In the 1950's, controls were introduced. But by then the population at large was already hooked.

30.59

Today, Japan has some of the world's  toughest anti-drug laws. Close tabs are kept on any vessel coming from a known narcotics centre. Police efforts have virtually eliminated production of illegal drugs within Japan, but it is  still a plum market for international drug smugglers.

31.20

And in a society where state-sponsored amphetamine abuse has become a national addiction, addicts can expect cold comfort if caught by the police, as Hiroto ‘Harry' Yamazaki, explains.

31.34

SYNC Hiroto ‘Harry' Yamazaki, Drug Enforcement Division, National Police Agency

I'm telling everybody I'm not ‘Dirty Harry', I'm ‘Clean Harry'.

31.41

Behind the humour lurks the tough drug enforcement line shared by many countries.

31.46

SYNC Hiroto ‘Harry' Yamazaki, Drug Enforcement Division, National Police Agency

From my point of view, I do not care about rehabilitation, because I only see the drug abusers as criminals.

32.08

That's a far cry from the theory of addiction increasingly adopted in the west. Here abuse is seen as a cycle which can be broken, or at least controlled. Picture-postcard Switzerland has long had a highly flexible approach to drug law enforcement.

32.26

In a park in the Swiss capital Berne heroin addicts shoot up in broad daylight. With 30,000 addicts in a population of seven million Switzerland has a serious drug problem. But heroin has been available legally from the government for several years. Critics say it prolongs addiction.

32.48

SYNC Boris Piske

If you get drugs from the government or you get drugs on the street, they're always poison.

33.56

In 1997 an overwhelming 71% of Swiss voters chose to extend the trial.

33.07

Evelyn has been using heroin for twelve years. She's one of about 1,000 addicts who now buy their drugs from the government. Twice a day she goes to this clinic in Berne for a strictly supervised hit.

33.21

SYNC Evelyn

I was clean for let's say, between ten or twelve months - which was the most - and two or three days. I've done at least 100 attempts to withdraw.

33.40

The theory is that trial keeps addicts alive and brings them back into society.

33.47

SYNC Evelyn

I could never cope with my life so well as now. I really can concentrate on the things which are important, well, life - like everybody leads a life.

33.03

And although they still use drugs, the heroin prescription programme takes addicts like Evelyn off the streets.

34.13

SYNC Evelyn

On the streets I cost the people a lot of money, taxes, and now I can support myself. I even pay for the drugs myself.

34.35

These singers were very alone too. But now they're a small community, keeping off drugs through strong Christian values.

Music up

34.54

The rule here is no drugs at all, right down to decaffeinated coffee.

They are the people campaigning for an end to heroin prescription.

35.07

Paul Stettler, drug rehabilitation centre

Drug addicts need much more than heroin. It can never be the solution for them. They have to be brought away from the drug using.

You see the motivation to go into the heroin programme is to get heroin but we should help for another motivation we should help to leave the heroin.

35.38

But supporters say the trial helps addicts who would be unreachable.

35.42

Zurich Police Spokesman

These trials helped us a lot, in so far that around 300 of the really heavy drug addicts have been absorbed by these trials and they got their heroin every day by medical doctors.

36.08

Whilst religious groups remain up in arms, the heroin clinic goes on providing hits. Evelyn is still addicted but since she's been getting legal supplies she's cut her intake by two-thirds.

Now she's got a job and somewhere to live.

36.26

Despite the massive increase in global drug production, the debate on decriminalising drugs is gaining ground.  Addicts without treatment, face a familiar spiral of crime, homelessness and degradation...

36.41

Voice of Evelyn

Begging in the streets for instance, or even prostitution. I didn't do that very much but I did it too and I hated myself for it...

36.51

Voice of Boris

I was a prostitute in my life to homosexual men...

36.59

Voice of Patty

We would smoke over $1,000 in a weekend.

37.04

Voice of John

Your body's so worn out that wherever you go you just want to sit down and when you sit down you just automatically want to go to sleep....

37.14

Voice of Dee

Now it comes time to sleep, you can't sleep because you're wired.

37.17

Voice of Tracy

I would go and smoke crack, or smoke marijuana, or smoke anything... just trying to get away from my depression and trying to escape my feelings...

37.35

The ubiquitous misery of the global addiction makes you wonder who the real criminals are, yet at some point in their lives, most drug addicts face jail.

37.49

SYNC Delores Hazen, mother of Death Row Prisoner

We've lost a whole generation of children, behind drugs. Everything that's in prison, everything that's on death row - they are from the ages of 25 to 34 years old. We've lost those people.

38.07

One of those is Glen McGinniss - on death row for a crime he committed in order to feed his mother's voracious crack habit...

38.15

SYNC Glen McGinniss

I seen what I did I can tell you how I did it step by step...

38.20

Reconstruction crime

His crime was armed robbery. America's drug-related ills, from violent crime to loss in productivity, cost the country $70 billion a year. But Glen McGinniss' victim paid the ultimate price.

38.39

The proportion of those arrested testing positive for any drug ranges from 50 to 80%.

38.47

SYNC Glen McGinniss, Death Row Prisoner

And you think the longer you live, the longer your chances are of getting of death row. The longer the time goes by you think you might have a chance. They ain't killed me yet they might not get me right?

39.06

But for many young men on death row, they'll never have the chance to beat the habit.

39.18

Conclusion

Across the globe, the fight to bust the drug business and cure addiction is being lost - despite the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars.

39.32

Even Muslim countries have reconciled their religious beliefs with the economic necessities of drug cultivation.

39.47

Until the strong pull of politics and economics are removed from the deadly equation, the world will remain paralysed by its global addiction.

END