Record levels of Heroin enters world market from Afghanistan
Opium production has reached high levels, showing signs of US failure in battling the problem despite spending billions of dollars. ● With an increase of 36 percent, over 200 thousand hectares is currently used to grow opium in Afghanistan, according to a US report. The report, which was commissioned by SIGAR, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction makes grim reading, with opium poppy cultivation increasing by over a third, while the country now has about 1.3 million heroin users. This is a ten-fold increase compared to 2005, when around 130,000 people were using the drug. Afghanistan is responsible for about three-quarters of the world’s heroin production, with much of it being cultivated in the Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the south of the country.