Pubdate: Wed, 24 Aug 2005
Source: Bradenton Herald (FL)
Copyright: 2005 Bradenton Herald
Contact:  http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradentonherald/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/58
Author: Daniel Cooney, Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

AFGHAN OPIUM PRODUCTION DOWN SLIGHTLY

Afghan Opium Production Down Just 2 Percent Despite Crackdown On Growing, 
U.N. Says

KABUL, Afghanistan - Bumper growing conditions meant that Afghanistan's 
opium production remained almost unchanged this year even though a 
crackdown on poppy farming cut the land under cultivation by 21 percent, 
the U.N. anti-drug chief said Monday.

Antonio Maria Costa warned it could take another 20 years to eradicate 
opium from the impoverished country - despite the recent injection of 
hundreds of millions in foreign aid to fight the world's biggest drug industry.

The narcotics trade is blamed for fighting in some poppy-growing areas and 
is suspected to be partially funding an insurgency by Taliban-led rebels 
that has killed more than 1,100 people in the past six months. It has also 
sparked warnings the country is fast becoming a "narco- state" less than 
four years after the U.S.-led invasion.

Opium production this year was 4,519 tons, just 2 percent down from the 
4,630 tons in 2004, said Costa, director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

He said Afghanistan is still estimated to produce 87 percent of the world's 
supply of both opium and its derivative, heroin, despite the authorities' 
destruction of some crops.

"We see a significant improvement in the amount of land cultivated in 
Afghanistan, a major reduction. One field out of five that was cultivated 
in 2004 was not cultivated this year," Costa told The Associated Press in 
an interview.

But he said that "heavy rainfall, snowfall and no infestation of crops 
resulted in a very significant increase in productivity."

A report by the U.N. agency said the total amount of land being used to 
grow poppies dropped from 323,570 acres in 2004 to 256,880 acres this year.

But the jump in crop yield - the opium harvested from each acre of poppies 
- - was 22 percent, it added.

The money being pumped into anti-drug campaigns by the United States, 
Britain and other countries is largely used to train police units to 
destroy laboratories, arrest smugglers and destroy opium crops, as well as 
to fund projects to help farmers grow legal crops.

Costa said another $510 million has been earmarked by donors for further 
assistance this year and next.

The drug czar praised President Hamid Karzai and his ministers for trying 
to eradicate drug production, but said some provincial governors and other 
officials were involved in the drug trade and should be removed.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman