Inside Afghan Heroin

Heroin: it's one of the most addictive drugs on Earth. The ultimate high. But the face of heroin is changing. No longer the dirty, back alley drug of two decades ago, heroin is now purer, stronger and cheaper than ever before. Today's heroin is so potent that snorting a line can satisfy even hardened users. No injections, no needles, no stigma, more takers. Heroin's demographic is changing as the addictive narcotic goes mainstream. Today, the global heroin market has exploded - more heroin is being produced than ever before - and no country is more responsible than Afghanistan. Afghanistan now supplies as much as 92 percent of the world's entire heroin supply. In 2006 Afghanistan produced more than six thousand tons of raw opium - the key ingredient used to create heroin - an amount that vastly exceeds the entire global demand. When it comes to illegal narcotics, a surge in supply can actually create demand by flooding existing markets. Just how much damage can Afghanistan's increasing supply of heroin create? Heroin promises the ultimate high, but all too often users pay the ultimate price. Recreational users can quickly become full-blown junkies consumed by a physical need for the famed heroin rush. CGI intercut with addicts using will graphically trace heroin from the blood to the brain. We'll learn exactly how the drug physically alters the brain's chemistry, creating a fierce addiction many find impossible to quit. In Chicago we'll meet a young woman we'll call Joanna. Smart, attractive and from a good family, Joanna is not the addict you'd expect. But she's the very picture of the new heroin user - a junkie by age 16. Now 25 and clean, she's one of the few who's come back from the edge and is beating the odds. Joanna's frightening story reveals just how this insidious drug is infiltrating high schools and suburbs across the country, enticing naive teenage users, and dragging them down into a horrible spiral of addiction. On the streets of St. Louis County, Captain Tom Jackson is tracking a dangerous new source of extremely potent heroin - a new kind of smack he calls 'China White'. We'll go on an undercover buy and try to stop a local dealer who's bringing China White into the community. Afghan heroin may just be making inroads into America, but it's already swept across Europe. Heroin has never been cheaper, or easier to obtain. In Oslo, Norway, we'll meet Joakim Gillebo, a young man who's lost everything to heroin. In 2002, Norway became known as the overdose capital of Europe - today the government is taking a new, radical approach to deal with heroin overdoses. On the streets of Kabul we follow Colonel Mohammad Taher of the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan as he plays a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with Afghanistan's smugglers. Drug smuggling has become a multi-billion dollar industry in this impoverished country and we learn just how this drug travels from the farm to the arm - revealing underground smuggling routes that bring heroin into countries like the United States and Norway. But most shocking, will be our discovery that the War on Terror may be responsible for this new surge in Afghan heroin.

Year Filmed: 2007