Aug. 7, 2007 | BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- Just outside the main gate to Bagram airfield, a U.S. military installation in Afghanistan, sits a series of small makeshift shops known by locals as the Bagram Bazaar. For Afghans, it is the place to buy American goods, but the stalls that make up the heart of the bazaar are also well known for what they provide American soldiers stationed at Bagram. Walking through the bazaar it takes less than 10 minutes for a vendor in his early 20s to step out and ask, "You want whiskey?" "No, heroin," I tell him. He ushers me into his store with a smile.

The first time Lauren, a suburban teenager in Connecticut, took a prescription pain killer, she says she was sick with strep throat during her freshman year in college and grabbed a Percocet from her parents' medicine cabinet. She never dreamed where that one pill would take her.

Since Tasmania produces massive amounts of opium straw for the pharmaceutical industry, Australian cops want to know if any of the carefully-regulated crops are making their way onto the black market. To solve that problem, chemists at the University of Newcastle have found an easy way to identify heroin made from the island-grown poppies.

The study, by Canadian researchers, found that injections of prescription heroin were more effective in treating longtime addicts than methadone, the most widely used treatment. Compared with addicts in the study who got methadone, those who received heroin were more likely to stay in treatment. Experts say lengthy treatment is often needed to treat other diseases as well as provide counseling to reverse criminal behavior and otherwise stabilize addicts' lives and improve the chances that they will stop using heroin.