Tobacco proved to be a gateway drug for Idris.

   The 16-year-old, who earns a meager living by selling cigarettes, said that since becoming addicted to his own product, he has moved on to stronger substances.

   "I didn't want to become addicted, but I started smoking since I was selling cigarettes," he said. "Then I tried hashish with other kids. Now I can't work unless I smoke hash two or three times a day."

   Idris is like many other young people in this western city who struggle to support themselves. He lost his family in the 1990s during the civil war. Now homeless, he is on his own and addicted to drugs.

   Nur Ahmad, 15, makes his living by shining shoes on the street. His father was killed during the civil war and after his mother remarried, his stepfather threw him out of the house.

   ``I started on snuff, moved on to cigarettes and now hashish," he said. "Now I smoke hashish with my friends every night."

   Dr. Abdul Shukur, who runs a center dealing with young drug addicts here, said he has recently seen an alarming increase of the number of young people who have come to his center for help.

   "We have children between the ages of 6 and 16 at our center," he said.

   Shukur blames a number of factors for the increase, including the large number of children orphaned during the years of fighting, and the booming illicit narcotics industry in Afghanistan, which means drugs are readily available.

   And with a record amount of opium being produced in Afghanistan this year, according to U.N. estimates, drugs should soon be even more plentiful.

   Shukur estimated that there are more than 2,000 drug-addicted children in Herat alone.

   A report issued by the United Nations' Office of Drugs and Crime late last year put the number of drug users in Afghanistan at 920,000, with 60,000 of those under 15.

   "Afghanistan is increasingly hooked on its own drug," said UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa.

   Abdul Hai Mahmudi, head of the Khoja Abdullah Ansari orphanage in Herat, said homeless children are especially vulnerable to becoming addicted and exploited to work as "mules" carrying drugs for the traffickers.

   "We have provided shelter for about 1,000 children, but that's only 20 percent of all the homeless children in the city," he said. "We just don't have the capacity to take them all."

   Mahmudi said traffickers often prefer to use children to transport drugs because they are unlikely to arouse much suspicion among the police.

   Some children become addicted to drugs inadvertently through their own parents.

   Juma Khan Karimzada, who works for a charity that cares for disabled children in the nearby province of Ghor, says some parents use the paste obtained from poppies to quiet their children. And since poppies are the raw material for producing opium and heroin, these parents have inflicted a lifelong addiction upon their youngsters.

   Karimzada said her organization is trying to combat the practice by warning parents of its danger through mosques and schools, but the problem remains widespread.

   As does the case of children becoming addicted to drugs while harvesting the annual poppy crop.

   That's what Mohammad Zarif, 17, who lives in the Braman district of Heart, blames for his current habit.

   "I'm not happy that I'm an addict," he said. "But I can't stop. There is no treatment for me. There is no real employment, either, and I do anything I have to in order to get food and drugs."