Report: Afghan opium a 'threat to world stability'
Friday, March 4, 2005 Posted: 7:54 PM EST (0054 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than three years after a pro-U.S. government was installed, Afghanistan has been unable to contain opium poppy production and is "on the verge of becoming a narcotics state," a presidential report said Friday.
The 2005 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) said that the area in Afghanistan devoted to poppy cultivation last year set a new record of 206,700 hectares, more than triple the figure for 2003.
The country's illicit opium/heroin production "can be viewed, for all practical purposes, as the rough equivalent of world illicit heroin production," the report said, and "it represents an enormous threat to world stability."
Afghanistan's opium production of 4,950 metric tons dwarfed that of second-place Myanmar by 17 times. Some 40-60 percent of Afghanistan's GDP is attributed to narcotics, the report found.
snip
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/03/04/afghan.narcotics.ap/index.htmlforget the fact that pre 911...the Taliban had the crops "BURNED DOWN"