Shaping the United States its people its economy and the way it deals with the rest of the well the bottom line only on aljazeera. Hello and welcome again to remind im elizabeth purana since we launched aljazeera english over a decade ago we havent been afraid of tackling difficult and sensitive stories through powerful Award Winning documentary hes today we rewinding to 2010 and a film that examines an unintended consequence of the continuing israeli blockade of gaza is growing opioid problem the gaza strip at points just 10 kilometers wide is an hour piece of land along the Eastern Mediterranean coast thats palestinian population a sealed behind a separation barrier and tightly controlled checkpoints gaza is home to more than 1500000 palestinians maybe half of them under 15 unemployment is among the highest in the world and every day is a struggle to survive. Its not surprising therefore the thousands of young people risk their lives by protesting against the occupation by israel at the border fence but as discovered when she traveled to gaza for aljazeera back in 2010 more and more of them turning to drugs to escape from the harsh realities of life his anus disturbing film on comfortably not a fit. Over the summer. This is gazas lifeline the tunnels on the border with egypt. They punch through the blockade that cuts gaza off from the outside world. For. The search. For. The money. And the money far away from israel. Around the clock to smuggle in vital supplies from deep within the earth. This tunnel is 18 meters below ground and its really quite warm in here even though its in the middle of winter there are 8 guys who do the Evening Shift who are working as we speak and theyre bringing in all sorts of merchandise its one of thousands of other tunnels he supply routes for gaza. Shipments of furniture clothes and food a steady supply of the dangerous drug is coming in from a dog or trauma as its known in gaza. Its a painkiller similar constituency to morphine used to relieve physical pain and its one that many go. Resorting to. Tramadol is illegal without a prescription but as. A selfconfessed long term drug user explains theres always a way to get a hold of it. I buy fake prescriptions heres a doctors prescription it says try to strips 20 pills and 20 pills for another painkiller also for 5. 00 if i dont get this prescription there are other ways to get the pills dealers bring in boxes of trauma through the tunnels every day there are thousands of boxes seized by the police but for every 1000 seized there is another 1000 that gets in so i go to people i know who can find it for me its a bit more expensive than the pharmacy but i buy it from them and get it dont add. Tramadol is dangerously addictive if taken in large quantities unsupervised 29 year old come in as among a growing number of gazans hooked on it his name and face are hidden because he does not want the police to identify him i want help with our law. The 1st time i took trauma was a 200 milligram pill a red one. We were invited to a relatives wedding and. When i take it i feel completely relaxed i forget about all my feelings and emotions. I feel total release when i take one or 2 pills. The higher the dosage the better i feel the more relaxed wellness is that the end can. Come out struggle with addiction has brought him here to gaza skum Unity Mental Health program its one of the few places for drug addicts to get treatment every week he meets with his psychologist dr samir is a coach for whom come else case is far from unique more women would many and. Most of the addicts are between the ages of 18 and 30. The insanity. Of all my cases are in that age bracket and herein lies the danger the danger is that those who are supposed to build our future are the most affected before i let you walk in and dublin wisdom a halo stuck back and if the number of cases ive seen are 150 there are hundreds of others that i have not seen and who would never seek the help of a doctor why because we live in a Traditional Society that fears the stigma attached to Mental Illness and addiction is not just considered to be a Mental Health issue its seen as even more serious than a lot of enough bottom in a lot of enough the. United nations april 2009 survey found that 80 percent of gazans questioned were doing more drugs than before the war. For camel the pills offer an escape from the reality surrounding him. Since the war we have been in a miserable situation. No jobs hamas and fatah fighting no reconciliation nothing to get a laugh. We were promised that things would open up more jobs will become available for me and others. We want the world to be open we dont want the siege on the national. And doctor is a good believes the problem is growing you would have had a bad. As the number of addicts went up after the war in gaza because that was unprecedented. Marceau if you have. The occupation employed every form of discriminant indiscriminate killing leaving the palestinians here feeling insecure and at risk wherever they are. Its not just the. Israelis suffocating siege gazans are from the outside world and made hundreds of thousands of them jobless. Gazans are becoming poorer by the day and. Out of 10 i now dependent on some form a few on handouts and as the blockade continues to buy the repetitive daily grind becomes more difficult to bear. These recent University Graduates spend much of their free time at this upscale restaurant one of the few refuges they have. The war has deeply affected us our spirit is destroyed we have not left since the war nor had a break and were still carrying it all inside us still they say illegal substances are finding their way into all social circles and across age brackets in gaza for Years Limited us and only my 15 year old brother brought some pills home from school he thought there were diet pills i took them to my father who is a doctor my father said the pills were true he granted my brother and we went to school and cause a fuss about it it turned out that there was a kid at the school who was distributing them some of the students thought these pills were to whiten your teeth even the kid who was distributing the trim said he didnt know what it was he was just selling it and it seems there is no shortage of buyers. When i would get work or take my daily wage and buy trouble for example i wouldnt buy fruit here. Even though i should have. I used to prioritize trauma over food. And one time my wife and i spent 3 days with nothing but a tomato had that well look at about one and have at it as gary i worked for the government for 7 years they still help me a little my pension is 200. 00 a month which helps. On fridays i go to any mosque and explain my situation to the mom the mom tells people that there is a brother in need and then i leave with an amount ranging from 40. 00 to 100. 00 given the day before yesterday i had no money and i asked my mother for 5. 00. 20 pills but needed to make sure i had a steady supply. As drug dealers stubbornly pursue new markets. The hamas run felice continues to battle them for control of the streets of gaza. The hamas government is widely credited for clamping down on criminals. Ending years of knowledge on the streets of gaza. But then it would be a democrat they used. Underfed just ruled there was an excess of democracy. And drugs were prohibited but when on the ground. So. And there they asked dealers to stop but the dealers were addicted to the money so they were all shot dead at their doorsteps when the gun one of them had pulled out the hand that they were big merchants people were coming in and out it was like a supermarket. Market. Down. The beliefs now theyve been tipped off and on their way to a drug bust and. They say this young man is dealing drugs with his brother hes taking them to his house where they plan to search for narcotics. And this is all they find this time around roughly a gram of. Which will result in a charge of possession rather than distribution. But its clear that such tactics can pay dividends the Police Showed us some of the drugs they have seized on previous raids. Pills of ecstasy hashish and. Tramadol. Unfortunately there is a big difference between the number of arrests in 2009 compared to 2008 drug cases have gone up in the last year in 2009 we had close to 1200 then 4 cases of which 500 the 91 war tramadol related to my or carbonell from it in a lot of we seized close to 2 and a half 1000000 trammell pills compared 2550000 in 2000 and. 10 says gaza stunnel i think t. Conduit for illegal substances into constrict. The drugs are mostly supplied by israel and directly via egypt and the tunnels some drugs also come directly from egypt the profits to young people who want to get rich quick. We have called dealers between the ages range from 20 to 23 with huge quantities of drugs and they are considered among the biggest dealers in gaza. This radius are the main source of drugs to gaza and their aim as our evidence from official cases shows is to flood gaza with drugs. We had some. The growing problem has prompted the police to push for stiffer sentences but theres only so much that a government can do. Some things will slip through the net in the shadowy underworld where thousands of gazans risked their lives every day to earn a living. These young men told us they regularly work overnight sometimes sustained by the illegal pills they help transport. Them. And. If you show. For the 1st time the hood harbor. For their store. Or forward. But for those who do get caught this is the law that awaits them. This is gaza sent from jail and this section where theyre holding prisoners on what charges users and dealers here is 120 of them in 3 different cells. Some of the men have been charged and convicted others are still waiting court proceedings. Were given him in. Motion i was put in prison 2 months ago i was playing the role of the middleman between a trader and a buyer. And i also take drugs. But after that i have been taking drugs for a long time since 1009. 111 and israel. So i know that is going to share this experience is humiliating as you can see 35 people sleeping in the same room is not healthy more learned that. The police say their prisons are part of an imperfect yet effective strategy to clamp down on trafficking. We stop 80 percent of the drugs before they entered the gaza strip then we start an investigation depending on the information we get the confessions we get from people the letters lead us to the major dealers who try to get the drugs from russia. But some question the methods used to extract information. As a habitual drug user callate claims hes experienced these methods 1st hand on more than one occasion. Bad. They just beat you up they tie you up like this they raise you up on a chair i swear and hang you from a chain for a day or 2. Of the watch with the blindfold you so you wont recognize the person beating you and then go after them in the streets. But when they let me down of the chair i couldnt feel my arms i swear i could not feel them. The ministry of interior denies physical violence is being used against drug offenders but can its allegations tapped into a longstanding taboo in Palestinian Society and in law wooded there are links between drug addiction and spying if you are an addict youre on the side of the occupation and as long as youre with the occupation then you are against Palestinian Society youre a suspect. Fattal used to link it to action with collaboration addicts get no sympathy. When the new government came to power they followed the same pose out of and then. The other thats why when an addict falls in the hands of the police youll find that the most junior to the most senior in the Police Hierarchy will beat him as a form of revenge we have heard. The doctor says this suspicion is fueling Police Behavior its aggravating and already serious problem. And to say to our left psychologically torture will only increase the persons addiction so youre making matters more complicated by beating him if the addict does not feel that society sees him as a human being and he or she will become more depressed than of us so well wait then of out of the you know what suffolk well done of out of the way you never thought id hear is difficult trauma siege and on top of that torture from your own people from the people you expect to be on your side that only increases the trauma and if the addict takes 2 pills of trauma how he was shell start to take for it off what about that as i clean him off with. The. With a siege that continues to tighten its grip on people some have resigned themselves to accepting the reality that its gaza today. And i did the planning i did i would like to be able to stop taking drugs because im tired im depleted from the inside. Im talking to you and all my internal organs are gods mercy sometimes i feel that my wife will try to wake me up but i wont wake up. And that i will be gone and meet god almighty with. Ready ready ready ready ready ready ready ready continues to see his doctor on a weekly basis ready he has not given up on his hopes for a Better Future ready one day. d the 1st thing i wish for is a job. The 2nd dream i have to settle in a house of my own. That i could have a nice home to live in d and to live the trammel pills behind the heart of. d uncomfortably naam from 2010 that was the situation a decade or so ago and conditions in gaza have if anything got worse since the palestinians began their find a protests at the border fence a recent report by the Un Human Rights Council logged 189. 00 killed and more than 6002018 alone it wouldnt be a surprise then if the opioid problem had to tear rated along with the political and humanitarian situation rewind returned recently to gaza to find out. Gazas drug problem hasnt gone away in the last 10 years if anything the recent upsurge in violence at the border has made the painkiller problem. 10 years on. Says theres still a reluctance to come forward to be treated as commUnity Mental Health program for fear of reprisals. Had a live in a minute man i had that. Well i can allow that theyll have to leave. The bin of see ya know your journey because 4000000 mccollum and i. Was middle are. As the Authority Comes down on tramadol other painkillers with brand names such as lark and furious that are becoming more popular and better to call arbor. Will be overwritten. Apart from the law paper pressure too isnt it the key reason why young people are taking these drugs a 3rd. Of the tower can tell me. Some of the shovel. Come out of the bottle to remain drug free is ongoing can live side could. Tell the. Baron in certain allocate more had ever the. Charity charity. In general carson or it could have been incentive. Has he moved the bill will. The medical community. Because this economic deprivation and lack of Employment Opportunities has led to a new more worrying problem women too are now becoming addicted. Many of hillel comes or a Serene Center where id come mess that they had. Become so its a reason fertile. Barbara. Said one week a trial should not have married man well added but there it is. In the past few years the Palestinian Authority targeted the drug traffickers. However ive excess are seen as criminals rather than patients. Nonvoting member are in the rama well is of value in. Imprisoning the growing number of addicts is clearly not the answer so gazas just problem. Doctors are believes that therapy is the only way to address the issue now. Is sarin. And just how many and. Survival only factored in the manner of a work on. Every market will insight into the side effects of israels continuing blockade of gaza well thats it from us to join us again next time and you can check out the rewind page at aljazeera dot com for more films from the series but for now thank you for joining us and see you again soon. Rewind retains. Updates on the past about his ears documentaries. To. Remind continues with the gift of science this surgical intervention is one of the few where you will see patients like this says at least 10 years younger than she was yesterday just within 24 hours on aljazeera. 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