Drug Mafioso Heads Afghan Anti-Narcotics Ministry

Afghan President Hamid Karzai nominated, and the Afghan Parliament overwhelmingly approved, the appointment of Zarar Ahmad Moqbel as Minister of Counter Narcotics this past January.  Moqbel is "associated with the drug mafia," according to U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry in a secret cable to Washington released Dec. 2 by Wikileaks.org, the whistleblower website.  Eikenberry wrote about Moqbel:

He is perhaps the worst of the candidates. Former Deputy Interior Minister and MP Helaludin Helal claimed to us January 11 that Moqbel was supported by the drug mafia, to include Karzai’s younger half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai and Arif Khan Noorzai.

Moqbel received the highest number of votes of any of the cabinet nominees.  The 249 members of the Afghan Parliament, known as the Wolesi Jirga, saw the vote as an opportunity to solicit "donations" -- typically, in the form of envelopes containing cash -- to their upcoming re-election campaigns.  Druglord Moqbel, according to Eikenberry's sources, set a record for such donations, paying Jirga members from about $8,000 to $15,000 (in U.S. dollars) each.  Source.

Moqbel replaced  General Khodaidad, whom Eikenberry described in an earlier cable as "a very good partner for U.S. counternarcotics efforts."  Source.

Moqbel had previously headed the Afghan Interior Ministry, a "byword for corruption and incompetence," according to a British security official quoted in the London paper, The Guardian.  Source.  The Interior Ministry's "culture of corruption and incompetence" aroused an international uproar two years ago, forcing President Karzai to sack Moqbel.  Now Moqbel is back, heading the counter-narcotics effort in a country where opium and its derivative, heroin, is the No. 1 export, accounting for more than half of the country's GNP, according to United Nations figures.  Source.  Afghanistan is the source of about 90 per cent of the world's heroin supply.

Two weeks after Moqbel's appointment to the Counter Narcotics post, deputy-level U.S. diplomatic and military officials in Kabul met to consider "possible courses of action" that they may use "against criminal and corrupt Afghan officials in an effort to change their behavior."  The group, titled the "Nexus-Corruption Leadership Board," adopted a set of recommendations including:

(1) no public meetings with the official (and no photos), and no high-profile public visits from CODELs and other dignitaries; (2) no giving or receiving of gifts; and (3) restrictions on opportunities for corrupt officials to participate in U.S.-funded training, travel, and speaking engagements. 

These recommendations, according to Ambassador Eikenberry in a confidential cable released by Wikileaks, are aimed to "end tacit American support for corrupt Afghan officials" and to attempt to change their behavior.  Source.  Among the highly placed Afghan officials "believed to be corrupt," the cable names Colonel Abdul Razziz, who controls a major border  crossing with Pakistan, President Karzai's half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, and Asadulla Sherzad, the chief of police.  Eikenberry adds that more direct measures, such as firing the corrupt officials or putting them in jail,  are not on the agenda "due to lack of capacity and lack of political will."

The Afghan Major Crimes Task Force, which has jurisdiction over corruption cases, has only four vetted prosecutors and only a small number of investigators, Eikenberry complained in another cable published by Wikileaks.  Source.  Its limited capacity is a "major challenge to successful prosecution."  It has no influence in the provinces.  Source.  Aside from the narcotics traffic, Afghan officials are busy "embezzling public funds, stealing humanitarian assistance, and misappropriating government property," forming "a graphic picture of criminal enterprise masquerading as public administration."  Source.

Responsibility for protecting the opium traffic lies at the top, with President Karzai, according to General Dan McNeill, then commander of the international force supporting the Afghan government.  McNeill told visiting director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy John Walters in March 2007 that

the missing ingredient in the counter-narcotics effort was Karzai. Despite some public statements, he had failed to take a real stand. Karzai needed to keep his support base happy, and as a result, he placated many of those involved in the drug business, especially in the west and south of the country. However, by not taking the issue on, Karzai was tacitly signaling his OK for poppy production.

Source.  McNeill added that prosecution of high-level officials in the drug trade was useless under the circumstances.

To Walters’ question on going after high value targets, McNeill said it was necessary to prosecute a few to keep faith with the general public. But he was skeptical it would have any real effect on the trafficking networks, as those arrested would simply be replaced by others.

Source.  Efforts to eradicate poppy cultivation frequently became only another opportunity for corruption.  Asadullah Khalid, the governor of Kandahar province, used members of the police force to do the eradication work, allowing him to pocket the funds allocated to hire local labor for the job.  And, according to Major General Ton Van Loon, the Dutch commander in the province, Asadullah "has been careful to eradicate only those fields not controlled by powerful people in the Province." Source.

The total acreage devoted to poppy growing in 2010 remained unchanged from 2009, according to a September 2010 United Nations report.  Source.  Eradication in 2010  was at the lowest level since recording began in 2005.  But the amount harvested dropped by 48 per cent, due to a late-season fungal blight.  The drop in quantity led to a spike in prices, and observers predicted that the high opium price, combined with a drop in the price of wheat, an alternative crop, would attract many more farmers to grow opium in this coming year.

Sliding into Iraqistan

[Originally posted 29 Oct 2010 on hellowellness.in]

Drug use among the Karzai government forces in Afghanistan is old news. That country is, after all, the world’s leading producer of opium, and high government officials, including the President’s brother, are widely believed to be among the kingpins in the heroin trade.  Now comes a report, in Monday’s New York Times, that government troops in Iraq have been sliding in the same direction. Reporters Timothy Williams and Omar al-Jawoshy write from Baghdad:

“A growing number of Iraqi security force members are becoming dependent on drugs or alcohol, which has led to concerns about a significant addiction problem among the country’s armed services as the insurgency remains a potent force and American troops prepare to depart at the end of next year.”

The reporters’ sources estimate that in some regions of Iraq, as many as half the officers and soldiers, including high-ranking officers, use drugs and/or alcohol while on duty.  Based on dozens of interviews, they write that alcohol and drug use among Iraqi police and military “has become increasingly common and appears to have grown significantly during the past year or so.”  

Some of the troops use drugs “to help us forget that we are hungry.”  Others use drugs to subdue their anxiety, fatigue, and boredom.  Officers look the other way because drug use makes some of the fighters fearless in combat.  It also makes them reckless.  Drug use was believed involved in recent incidents where Iraqi forces massacred civilians and also turned on one another.  Generally, the growing drug use contributes to lack of discipline and cohesion.  

The units with the biggest drug habits appear to be those with the most challenging assignments: manning checkpoints in contested areas, and members of special forces teams that do night raids, assassinations, and other “counter-terrorist” work.  The article leaves the impression that Iraqi forces are not prepared to perform this kind of work when their minds are clear.  

The Times article says nothing about drug use among American and other allied forces in the country.  We already know from other sources that numerous GI’s have come home from the Iraqi theatre with serious substance abuse problems.  Significant drug use by British troops has also been documented.  

The Times’ reporters unfortunately have nothing to report about the drug situation among the “insurgent” forces, other than to speculate that some “insurgent” groups are helping to import the drugs from Afghanistan and other countries, with transparent motives.  But commerce is not necessarily also consumption.  Are the resistance fighters, unlike the government forces, capable of doing what they do with minds unimpaired by addictive substances?  It would be an interesting chapter in the study of guerrilla warfare to know how the use of addictive substances by one side or another, or both, affects the methods of the struggle and its ultimate outcome.  

The spread of drug use on the scale that the Times article reports could not occur without the complicity of the highest command.  Iraq does not have the domestic drug production capacity of an Afghanistan or a Colombia, but abundant opportunities for profit exist whenever there is widespread consumption.  To the bulging catalogue of corruption already compiled by the principals of the current Iraqi ruling groups, a new chapter on drug trafficking will need to be added.  

Looking at world events through the lens of the addiction issue is, for an American, a bitter experience.  Here I sit, more than 18 years clean and sober, having invested the better part of my life in building a new roadway out of addiction, and I see my government spending my tax money  (and the blood of my compatriots) propping up a set of foreign regimes that grow fat on building more roads into addiction.

Afghan farmers see through "drug war"

Recent U.S. initiatives to eradicate poppy fields in selected areas of Afghanistan, on the Colombian model, have met with growing resistance by Afghan farmers, according to a briefing paper by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (link):

"The view that the government is willing to deepen the poverty of some of its rural population for the sake of a ban on opium poppy cultivation further alienates the rural population. The belief of many farmers that those enforcing the ban and eradicating their crop are themselves actively involved in the opium trade makes matters worse; so does the perception of widespread bribery and the sense that eradication targets the vulnerable and ignores the crops of those in positions of power and influence."

Afghan farmers are seeing that the eradication efforts are aimed mainly at growers or dealers who are competitors to the growers and dealers connected with the Afghan government and its sponsors. A secondary aim of eradication may be to reduce the over-all supply in order to maintain prices. The Afghan farmers are seeing firsthand what the "war on drugs" is all about and they're not buying into it. The study's authors caution that Afghan farmers will continue to grow the poppy until they're presented with a reasonable alternative -- and none is in sight.

Drug problem in Afghanistan getting worse, UN says

NEW YORK: Despite efforts by the Afghan government and the international community, the drug control situation in the country is worsening, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said in its annual report.

The production of illicit opium poppy in Afghanistan reached a record 6,100 tons in 2006, up almost 50 percent from the previous year, the report said.

Due to a rising level of Afghan opiate trafficking, the Vienna-based UN drug control watchdog added, the neighbouring countries are now faced with a wide range of problems, "such as organized crime, corruption and relatively high illicit demand for opiates."

Moreover, the drug abuse by injection is increasingly becoming one of the main factors behind the widely spread of HIV/AIDS in some areas of the region. Source.

State Dept drug report plays politics

The U.S. State Department report on the worldwide illegal drugs trade issued March 1 reads like a political propaganda bulletin more than a real research report. Regimes that have Bush administration support, such as Colombia and Afghanistan, get patted on the head for their alleged drug control efforts, while heads of state that give Bush hell (as in Venezuela, Bolivia, and others) get blasted for alleged complicity in the dirty business.

The facts remain -- and the report admits -- that Colombia produces 90 per cent of the world supply of cocaine, and Afghanistan supplies more than 90 per cent of the heroin, and both are close allies of the Bush administration. Neither Colombia nor Afghanistan could achieve anything remotely near this kind of market domination without at least the active benevolence of their respective governments.

The report, which runs to 9 megabytes in PDF online (Vol. 1 here and Vol. 2 here), shows its political bias most transparently in the summary on Afghanistan. While admitting that Afghan opium production increased 25 per cent last year, the report claims that heroin stemming from Afghan opium is distributed almost exclusively in Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Asia. It claims that most of the heroin sold in the U.S. comes from poppies grown in Colombia and Mexico, which together account for only four per cent of the world supply.

The State Department strains credulity when it asks us to believe that the huge U.S. heroin demand is fed by this relative trickle of supply. The report says in one passing sentence that "Heroin produced from Afghan opium also finds its way to the United States" (Vol. 1, p. 19) but makes no effort to quantify this grudging admission.

The presence of Afghan heroin in the United States is a political landmine for the Bush administration. The bumper crops of opium recorded in Afghanistan since the invasion are unmistakably the administration's baby. To protect the administration, the State Department, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy all repeat the fairy tale that Afghan heroin in the U.S. is insignificant. But local police and treatment staff in many parts of the U.S. know better. Search this blog under "Afghanistan" for a selection of local news stories, many of them from the heartland, about heroin addiction and overdose deaths due to the high-potency white powder heroin made in Afghanistan under the protection of American troops by a regime propped up with American taxpayer dollars.

WHAT war on drugs?" As Gandhi reportedly said about Western civilization, "I think it would be a good idea."

UK: "Restricted" report urges Rx heroin

The government should consider providing free heroin to hard-core addicts through the National Health Service as a way to reduce crime, says a top-level report by the UK Home Office.

Marked "restricted" because of its controversial recommendations, the document was leaked to The Independent.

There is mounting evidence that trying to restrict the supply of drugs is impossible, says the document. Even if partially successful, supply restriction merely drives up the price of drugs and drives addicts to commit more crimes.

The report comes in a setting where cheap and potent Afghan heroin in unprecedented volume has been flooding into the UK from all ports of entry.

"There is a strong argument that prohibition has caused or created many of the problems associated with the use or misuse of drugs. One option for the future would be to regulate drugs differently, through either over-the-counter sales, licensed sales or doctor's prescription." Source.

For a historical review of similar policy recommendations, see the Transform Drug Policy web site.

Afghan war and suburban heroin deaths: Putting it all together

At least one blogger has begun to put the pieces together: Young suburban white kids in the Midwest dying of powder heroin overdoses and suburban Midwest Republican politicians -- more or less the parents of these same kids -- rabidly supporting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq:

It seems almost scary, but is it possible that the wealthy in this country have in effect sold their children to the Afghanistan drug lords through their greed, blind patriotism and hatred?

See more reflections along this line in Crawford's Take.

Afghanistan: Whole villages addicted

Elizabeth Bayer, formerly of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Afghanistan, reports:

"There are villages in the north of Afghanistan where the entire population is addicted to opium. Mothers in carpet weaving districts take opium to ease muscle aches earned from spending long days at the loom, and give it to their children to keep them quiet."

Says Bayer: "There is no education, no awareness of the harm that opium causes. People here have been traumatized. If they can find something to relieve the pain, they will take it." From Time magazine 2/14/07.

Afghanistan: "The poppy will eradicate us"

From a World Politics Watch article by freelancer Jason Motlagh:

As the Taliban makes headway in the south and east, the largest-ever opinion survey shows one-fifth fewer Afghans believe the country is moving in the right direction compared to the eve of 2004 elections. Contempt mounts each day against President Hamid Karzai for failing to hold members of his government accountable. According to Crisis Group, his Anti-Corruption and Bribery Office has a staff of some 140 and has been operating for over two years but has yet to obtain a conviction. U.S. Defense Department and European officials say at least half of all Western aid does not reach those who need it. Drug-related corruption is most problematic at the local-regional level, though a number of state employees told me the trail leads all the way back to Kabul, where suspiciously lavish homes interrupt otherwise drab neighborhoods. Perhaps no one has defined the situation better than the embattled president himself: "If we fail to eradicate poppy, the poppy will eradicate us."

Read the full article.

From one narco-state to another

President Bush has nominated William Wood, the current U.S. ambassador to Colombia, to the same post in Afghanistan. Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the press that the President's intent was to transfer the Colombian model to Afghanistan.

Among the numerous voices questioning the wisdom of this judgment was the New York Times, which editorialized on Feb. 6:

The limited gains Colombia has achieved in recent years have been offset by an overly generous amnesty program for right-wing paramilitary leaders and drug traffickers, which has seriously compromised the rule of law. And American aid has been disproportionately directed into military and police programs, leaving far too little to promote alternative livelihoods for Colombia’s farmers. Despite all the money spent, the amount of land planted with coca crops has risen and the net harvest has been reduced only slightly. Afghanistan’s problems will not be solved by copying these mistakes.

Source. It sounds like, apart from the language barrier, Wood will feel right at home in Colombistan.

A long, insightful piece on the Colombia/Afghanistan parallel by Simon Jenkins in the Sunday Times (London) makes a similar point. In Afghanistan, he says:

Here, too, the West is intervening in a narco-economy that is destabilising a pro-western government. Here, too, quantities of aid have been dedicated to security yet have fed corruption. Here, too, intervention has boosted drug production and stacked the cards against law and order. This year’s Afghan poppy crop is predicted to be the largest on record. European demand has boosted the price paid for Afghan poppies to nine times that of wheat. At this differential a policy of crop substitution is absurd. ...
Some 40,000 Nato troops from more than 30 different countries are gathered in Kabul. Since many of them refuse to fight, the city has become a holiday camp for the world’s military elite. Outside the capital, military occupation acts as a recruiting sergeant for insurgency, leaving Nato bases constantly on the defensive. ...

Jenkins' piece, titled "America is doped up in Colombia for a bad trip in Afghanistan," observes that in Helmand province, a major poppy area, "drug lords are the only counterweight to the Taliban." Source.

All quiet on the Walters front

John P. Walters, head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), told the press last December 9 that Afghanistan would become a "narco-state" unless a major campaign of spraying the poppy fields with herbicide were initiated. Walters, in fact, announced that such a campaign had been decided on. Source.

Six weeks later, the Karzai regime in Kabul announced that spraying the poppy fields would not happen, either from the air or from the ground. See earlier blog item here. Instead of expressing dismay, the White House pledged additional funds and troops, and Pres. Bush sent personal well-wishes to Karzai.

The effect was to hang Walters out to dry. The "giant steps" toward poppy eradication that he said were needed to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a narco-state are not going to happen. The "scourge of corruption" that troubles Afghanistan's institutions, according to his Dec. 9 statement, is unchecked and reinforced, with the blessings of the Bush administration.

If Walters had any backbone, he'd resign.

View from Pakistan: Afghanistan is narco-state

Afghanistan has become a narco-state, says Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, in a commentary in the Pakistan Daily Times.

The twin strategy of war and reconstruction in Afghanistan has failed to achieve any remarkable success. The country is sliding fast into chaos and disorder, particularly on its southern and eastern periphery. If other areas are calm, it is not because the state has extended its writ to them, but because it has surrendered its authority to the local warlords. There is general despondency and frustration among the population.

Their grief and anger is widely shared by the international community and by friends of Afghanistan throughout the world. After three bouts of deadly war, the Afghans thought they would have a better, peaceful future and economic opportunities to reconstruct their individual and collective lives.

The Taliban have re-emerged as a formidable force, against the hope that international intervention and political reconstruction would end the war. The warlords continue to stay put and strong, forcing President Hamid Karzai to make compromises. The Pashtun regions remain unstable and out of the government’s control.

Local farmers and international drug-traffickers have found the absence of the Afghan state and weak political and security arrangements auspicious for reviving poppy cultivation on a scale never known before in the history of the country. Afghanistan unfortunately has become a narcotics state — a development that has taken place in the presence of NATO, ISAF and US forces.

The U.S. under the Bush administration has allied itself with the warlords, the worst and least popular elements of Afghan society:

The warlords humiliated, coerced and murdered tens of thousands of Afghans, and most of them had a narrow support base in their immediate ethnic or tribal communities. The United States, by co-opting them as allies against the Taliban, rehabilitated them, empowered them with money and weapons and gave them a dignified space in the new political structure.

Most of them have committed untellable atrocities against their political and ethnic rivals and could be put before an international criminal tribunal for their crimes against humanity. All of them have been spared for the ‘good’ work they have done for the US and ISAF forces.

Read the full commentary.

Boston: Politicos dragging feet on heroin problem

"Our public officials and elected representatives continue to drag their feet on increased funding for, and accessibility to, aggressive rehabilitation and educational programs" to meet the heroin problem, says a letter to the Boston Globe by Jody Price of Brockton.

Ms. Price is one of the parents in the suburban Boston area whose family has been hit by heroin addiction.

She says of the local politicos: "Their inaction abandons families to be destroyed by the gut-wrenching fear and life-changing grief they suffer, struggling to save their children, then losing them to overdose. " More.

Afghanistan: No programs to replace poppy crop

Dutch Minister of Development Agnes van Ardenne told a television audience last week that Dutch soldiers serving in the NATO force in Afghanistan will not take part in any efforts to destroy the poppy crop because no comprehensive plan exists to help farmers grow and market other crops.

Afghanistan currently produces enough poppies to make 90 per cent of the world's heroin. Source.

In the heartland: Powder heroin No. 1 drug

Powder heroin is the drug of choice in Shelby, Ohio, says police Capt. Lance Combs.

"We're seeing a lot more property crime, which I think we can attribute to heroin abuse," Combs said. "We see a lot of thefts of checks and forgeries and smash-and-grabs from vehicles. They just run out of money."

Death from overdose is not uncommon. Combs said Shelby, a town of 9,000 people, has had five fatal overdoses in the last two years.

"The availability of it is what kills us," Combs said. "We try to focus on the people who are selling it as much as we can."

But that's not easy. -- Read details in the Bucyrus Telegraph Forum.

Afghan warlords won't spray poppies, Bush sends money, troops, good wishes

President Hamid Karzai of Kabul and suburbs has said no to proposals to spray Afghan poppy fields from the air with herbicide. In a statement issued Thursday, he cited concerns about possible harm to food crops, animals, inhabitants, and the environment.

Observers noted that powerful backers of Karzai's government, including the ministers of agriculture, defense, rural development, and counter-narcotics, among others, strongly opposed the spraying plan, as did governors of the big drug-producing provinces.

John Walters, the director of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, visited Kabul last month and brought pressure for the spraying. Walters said Afghanistan could turn into a narco-state unless "giant steps" were made toward eliminating poppies.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul responded to Karzai's announcement with a conciliatory statement that spraying "is a decision for the Afghans to make."

This year's opium crop in Afghanistan is 6,700 tons, up 49 per cent from last year. That's enough to make 670 tons of heroin, 90 per cent of the world's production, and more than all the current heroin addicts in the world consume in a year.

U.S Ambassador Ronald Neuman said that last year, about 1,500 acres of poppies had been destroyed by non-chemical means. That's about three tenths of one per cent of the 407,000 acres in opium cultivation in Afghanistan last year. Source.

The New York Times editorialized Friday that "the government of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is rife with corruption, and the regional warlord allies it depends on to control outlying areas are even more thieving as well as shockingly brutal." Source.

The day after Karzai's statement defending the opium crop, Secy of State Condoleeza Rice announced that the U.S. was planning to spend an additional $10.6 billion to prop up Karzai's government, and will extend the tours of duty of U.S. troops stationed there. Source. Two days later, Pres. Bush called Karzai "to pass his and Mrs. Bush's congratulations to the Karzai family on the birth of their son." Source.

Iraq, Afghan wars open gaps in U.S. drug defenses

The Iraq and Afghan wars have cannibalized the U.S. effort to defend the borders against drug imports, the L.A. Times wrote Jan. 22. Source.

The Pentagon has reduced by more than 62% its surveillance flight-hours over Caribbean and Pacific Ocean routes that are used to smuggle cocaine, marijuana and, increasingly, Colombian-produced heroin. At the same time, the Navy is deploying one-third fewer patrol boats in search of smugglers. Many other similar efforts have been cut back.

The L.A. Times deserves commendation for its stories digging into the Bush Administration's mounting official indifference, at best, to the growing floods of illegal drugs pouring into the U.S. from many quarters, not the least from Afghanistan, where U.S. forces installed and are protecting the druglords that now produce 90 per cent of the world's heroin.

Heroin abundant, diamorphine scarce

Two leading members of the British Medical Association went public yesterday with the suggestion that Afghan poppy fields be used to make diamorphine, the potent painkiller used in surgery and with the terminally ill. While the streets of Europe and increasingly the U.S. show a plentiful supply of illegal Afghan heroin, over the past year a serious shortage of the legitimate medication has developed.

Dr Jonathan Fielden, a consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care with the BMA, said: "Over the past year the availability of diamorphine has dramatically reduced. It has got to the stage where it is almost impossible in some hospitals to get hold of this drug for use outside very specific circumstances."

Unnamed authorities quoted by The Independent (London) claim that harvesting Afghan opium for legitimate medical uses would be impractical. Source. The most likely reason it would be impractical is that the opium fields are in the hands of the warlords who run the Kabul government under the protection of NATO forces. Heroin is much more lucrative than diamorphine.

World's fastest-growing agricultural land use: opium

On the heels of the study showing marijuana as the most valuable agricultural crop in the United States comes the finding that the opium poppy, not soybeans, is the world's most rapidly increasing agricultural land use.

The increased acreage planted to the opium poppy in Afghanistan since the U.S. occupation outraces all other acreage shifts in the world's agricultural economy, according to the Real Estate Economy blog. Source. The author writes:

The most telling part of the story is that heroin production was practically eliminated by the Taliban, and this born again boom of the illicit crop has taken place under America's post-9/11 watch. ...

Hardly a surprise that we've failed to locate bin Laden. Hell, we apparently can't even find almost half a million acres of opium.

In the heartland: Not enough heroin detox beds

Peoria, IL: About three years ago, White Oaks treatment center staff began noticing a new population of young people coming in for heroin detox.

It is a predominantly white, middle-class group between the ages of 18 and 25, though there have been clients younger than that. They come from Peoria and also from smaller towns and more rural areas.

Unfortunately, there just aren't enough beds to accommodate the recent surge in heroin use. Entry to the detox unit is generally on a first-come, first-served basis with some restrictions.

Last year at White Oaks, 269 patients - 14 percent of all those admitted - listed heroin as their primary or secondary addiction. Just as many, if not more, were turned away because there just wasn't the room.

There were times when six or seven of the 12 beds were filled with heroin users, and staff had to turn away those with other addictions like alcoholism that also carry serious, and possibly deadly, health issues.

For that reason, the center now tries to limit it to just two or three heroin users admitted at a time.

"Honestly, I feel that if we had 50 beds, we could fill them," said nurse Carol Leckrone, manager of the detox unit. "We have this great need, but this facility is only so big, and we're turning them away." Read full story from the Greater Paramus News.