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Winners Gallery | Photographer of the Year - Freelance/Agency | Second Place
Second Place
Paula Bronstein
Getty Images


39 of 48

Second Place
Paula Bronstein
Getty Images


"LIFE WITH HEROIN"

Addicts smoke heroin packing a room inside the abandoned Russian Cultural center used as the heroin gathering point in the captiol city February 08, 2009 in Kabul Afghanistan. Heroin addicts are on the increase in Kabul as the numbers of unemployed increase and the drug continues to be readily available and extremely cheap at only 50 afghany per hit or $1.USD. Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 per cent of the world's heroin supply. Its annual opium harvest is worth up to $3bn, or almost half the country's official gross domestic product. Profits from heroin fund the Taliban, along with corrupt Afghan officials who profit from it. Recently the Obama's US special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke stated that the US counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan "may be the single most ineffective program in the history of foreign policy." Many Afghans have come back from Iran working in blue collar labor jobs already addicted. There are 1.6 million addicts in Iran according to the UN office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) all dependent on the heroin supplies coming from neighboring Afghanistan.

 

 

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