Drought reduces opium production

Opium production in Afghanistan went down this year, not because of a decrease in the acreage under cultivation but mainly as a result of insufficient rainfall, according to an annual survey by experts within the country. Afghanistan is still the largest opium producer in the world, Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (ODCCP) Pino Arlacchi said on Thursday, citing the findings of the study. The survey revealed that 3,275 mt of raw opium were produced this year, 28 percent less than last year’s record output of 4,581 mt. However, “the reduction was mainly due to the drought that ravaged southern Afghanistan and many parts of the north,” he said. The provinces of Helmand and Nangarhar, with over 62,000 hectares under poppy cultivation, accounted for some 76 percent of the national total. The highest opium production, 425 mt, was recorded in the district of Nad-e-Ali in Helmand. The Taliban control 96 percent of the land given over to poppies. “Of the 327 tonnes of heroine produced in Afghanistan, about half is consumed in Pakistan and Iran,” Arlacchi said. “The other half ends up in Europe.” The ideal long-term solution to Afghanistan’s drug problem was to encourage the production of other crops, he said. In the districts of Ghorak, Khakrez and Maiwand, in Qandahar province, where the UN International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) is implementing alternative development projects, the opium harvest has been slashed by about 50 percent. At a high-level meeting held on Thursday at the United Nations in New York, senior officials from China, Iran, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and the United States approved a regional drugs control programme designed to improve information exchange and to promote cooperation on the prevention of illicit cross-border drug shipments. Arlacchi hailed the efforts of Tajikistan, which seized 800 kg of heroin during the past six months. UNDCP started the annual poppy survey in 1994 in response to the alarming increase in poppy cultivation. The survey is ground-based, using a combination of rapid field measurement techniques and key informant interviews throughout all poppy-growing areas of the country.