In this case, not religion.
It is opium and in huge quantities, produced in Afganistan with results that 5.3 percent of the population are addicts, one of the highest percentages in the world (International New York Times, Monday, November 4), and the ‘people’ are kids.
In one area, the Herat Province, lauded for its progressive society and clean streets, has up to 100,000 addicts, many of whom say they began their habits while working in Iran.
I’m not sure I want to read over mama’s shoulder any longer when I read about sadness such as this and think of what drugs are doing to kids. Children are becoming addicts in Afganistan because of second-hand opium smoke, according to the article by journalist, Islam Qala. Whole families are addicts, and there is little treatment for addicts because of corruption in the government and little restraint on the production of this killer. If you have the stomach for it, do go to the article link in this blog, because there is a photograph of a young boy, addicted since who knows when, that will tear your heart.
My life as a kitty is so protected. And so many children, relatively speaking, are protected and cherished by their parents and family. It is heart-breaking to read this article and realize that whole families spend their days trying to find drugs, and that there is no much hope in sight. I don’t know why I felt the need to write about this, but the little boy moved me to kitty tears, and I feel helpless to help an entire nation that, in effect, condones its peoples’ addiction. Shameful that opium cultivation is at its highest since 2008, and that very little money is spent by the government to provide clinics and counseling for those afflicted. But children are suffering the most. No one is guiding them, no one is caring for them. When parents are addicts and give drugs to their children without thought of consequences, it is one of the worst forms of child abuse.
How do these things happen? I think that to try to stop the cultivation of opium in Afganistan is a moral obligation of the international community, but if it dwindles, there will be even more need of it and prices will shoot up while the band aid struggles to hold.
A kitty like me has no solutions.
Here I sit on my comfortable piano bench, cared for and loved and out of harm’s way. That little boy has a right to his childhood, a right to his future.
Mama said that there is a saying that an old comic character, Mr. McGoo, used to deliver as an aside when kids were acting up, “Drown ’em at birth.”
They do it to kitties, after all, those shits.
Perhaps it is more applicable for some parents.
