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 Afghanistan:
Opium Cultivation Reaches Record High
Afghanistan's opium cultivation jumped 64 percent to a record 324,000 acres this year and drug exports now account for more than 60 percent of the economy, the United Nations drugs office said.
"This year Afghanistan has established a double record -- the highest drug cultivation in the country's history, and the largest in the world," Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told a news briefing.
Opium, the raw material for heroin, was grown in all Afghanistan's 32 provinces this year. Ten percent of the population, or 2.3 million people, helped farm it because
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 UK: Heroin Found In Christmas Trees
Heroin with a street value estimated to be about UKP4m has been seized by customs officers at Harwich.
A van loaded with Christmas trees was stopped after leaving the high-speed ferry from Holland and 75kg of the drugs were discovered after a search.
A 49-year-old driver from Swindon was arrested and was being questioned by customs officers at the port on Wednesday night.
Jim Jarvie, of HM Customs, said seizing the haul was a major success.
The assistant chief investigating officer said: "This seizure has prevented a large quantity of Class A drugs hitting the streets of the UK.
"In line with the government's drug strategy, HM Customs continues to work with agencies in the UK and beyond to protect the public from being exposed to the harm these drugs produce."
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grinding poverty made it more attractive than other crops. "Cultivation has spread making narcotics the main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome peoples," Costa said. "Valued at $2.8 billion, the opium economy is now equivalent to over 60 percent of Afghanistan's 2003 gross domestic product."
While the area under cultivation soared, it was still less than three percent of the country's arable land, the U.N. said in a report posted on its Web Site.
But heroin production rose just 17 percent to 4,200 tons, below the 1999 record of 4,600 tons under the radical Islamic Taliban regime, due to bad weather and an insect infestation.
The massive 1999 crop and another large harvest in 2000 led to a stock-build which forced prices down, leading the Taliban to all but eliminate opium production in 2001. Prices leapt from $28 per kilo at the farm gate in Afghanistan in 2000 to $301 a year later. The U.N put the 2004 price in Afghanistan at $92 per kilo.
NARCO-ECONOMY...»»
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