The Grip of the Dragon - 1998

1st June 1998

The production of opium in pakistan has plummeted thanks to a 15 year eradication programme. The shattering irony is that in the same 15 years Pakistan has gone from a nation of almost no drug users to the one with the most heroin addicts in the worls. Martin Adler follows the addicts to the slims and sewers of Pakistan's cities and analyses the social traumas induced by drug addiction. Still more disturbing - evidence that rural labourers are being paid in heroin, making them slaves to the drug.

Transcript:

11.05.38.10 paramilitary soldiers on hilltop surveying the Vihaq Valley
11.06.00.12 poppies in field
11.06.04.01 convoy
11.06.12.15 harvesting opium
11.06.18.10 pan across big gun
11.06.30.10 elders arguing amongst themselves
11.07.04.10 men bashing poppy plants with big sticks
11.07.34.18 Jamsheed Ali Khan young opium farmer
11.07.56.19 crushed poppy plants
11.08.04.13 sewer smoking from burning heroin
11.08.20.09 candle, addicts smoking heroin (chasing the dragon)
11.09.38.20 Anjum taking heroin with others
11.10.44.10 Anjums family
11.11.32.08 Anjum hugging mother as he leaves for detoxification centre
11.11.47.21 exterior detox centre interior offices Tariq Zafar
11.12.16.01 Pumjabi centre in Lahore (mental hospital) man in bed coughing men watching tv
11.12.54.05 detox patient pleading
11.13.11.23 detox patient being forced out of centre
11.13.18.18 man lying in street covered in flies
11.13.35.16 Badashi Mosque in Lahore, men outside smoking heroin
11.14.13.16 needle injection Heroin
11.15.09.10 rural scenes harvesting wheat
11.15.42.15 foreman paying labourers in heroin
11.16.17.01 labourers chasing the dragon
11.17.02.05 labourers walking
11.17.49.07 UNDCP office
11.20.29.01 Nai Zindigi centre, Anjum in centre men in very bad states whilst detoxing