children

Afghan women and children use palliative opium

Women and children in rural areas of Afghanistan consume opium on a regular basis to cure their illnesses. The women say they believe opium has curative powers. The journalist however contests that they are oblivious of the real dangers connected to smoking opium.

Of victims and heroes

In a day like this, where scientific advances and social tolerance towards people living with HIV/AIDS have improved their life expectations, improved the solidarity and partly destroyed stigmatisation, it is time to remember the early victims looking back at how the pioneers of the fight against the virus committed their efforts to combat prejudices and help those who faced a new unknown and underserved death full of the most possible negative connotations at the time.

The kids are (not) all right

A group of researchers from the Center for Global Health and Development, University of Boston, have produced an interesting report about another forgotten collective of the sex industry and drugs world. The researched are the most innocent people yet to be examined because they did not choose to face the problems of their realities but much on the contrary they were forced into them simply because their parents were either injecting drug users, sex workers or a combination of both

Children now begin to smoke as early as age nine

In a low-income city in Wales, Merthyr Tyfdil, the average age adolescents begin smoking is 12. Weekly smoking is reported in 19% of boys aged 15 years, and 28% of girls aged 15 years in 2004. Many parents initiate their children into smoking, not only by being smokers themselves but also by giving their children cigarettes because they see it as funny and entertaining.

A toddler smoking a blunt

A two year old smoking a blunt is a sad reflection on US drug policy.

It says everything about what is wrong with the current system of drug control.

A medium-rare bollocking

I can clearly remember the day I arrived at school. As we drove through the main gates I remember a growing feeling of unease. Previously I had gone to school in London (where we lived) only a short claustrophobic tube ride from my family, and as we slowly drove up the hill towards what was to be my boarding house for the next year (the building was affectionately known as “Cardboard Castle” and was meant to be a temporary fifteen years ago) it finally began to settle in that I really was leaving home.

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Drug taking parents

Skyy vodka had no problem associating drug use with good parenting. Can parents responsibly use drugs and alcohol? If your parents used drugs and alcohol how were you affected by it?

Children drinking alcohol

Children get hold of drugs and alcohol despite the law. We obviously need to protect children. The availability of drugs and alcohol to school age children indicates we are not doing a very good job of it.

Surely better education would be better than heavy use of the law. Giving a criminal record to somebody starting out in life for a small quantity of cannabis or something similar, seems to be a crazy thing for a society to do.

Afghanistan: youths hit by heroin

Al Jazeera, Kabul. While Afghanistan is blamed for the vast majority of heroin that's trafficked around the world, the level of addiction at home is a growing problem. Official figures show more than 900,000 Afghans are hooked on heroin, and nearly a quarter of those addicts are women and children. Alan Fisher reports from Kabul on a new clinic dedicating its efforts to helping women and girls get clean.

9 year old kid talks intelligently about LSD

Clip from a documentary about Timothy Leary's LSD experiments at a large private mansion in New York known as Millbrook, where children as young as 9 were given LSD.

Kid: "You can actually have a religious experience . . . and it can be even more important than reading the bible 6 times or becoming a pope or something like that. "

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