Government approves new counter-narcotics law

The Afghan government has approved a new counter-narcotics law to fight illicit drug trafficking in the world’s biggest opium producer. The law recommends the establishment of a Drug Regulation Commission (DRC), and lays out significant penalties for corruption and bribery associated with drug trafficking. “After the establishment of special judicial task force, known as the Counter-Narcotics Trust Fund (CNTF), the passing of this counter-narcotics law is another major step forward in the government’s counter-narcotics campaign,” said Habibullah Qaderi, the Minister for Counter Narcotics, on Tuesday in the capital, Kabul. The law establishes the Ministry of Counter Narcotics (MCN) as the leading body to monitor, evaluate and coordinate all counter-narcotics activities in the country. Before the law was presented to the ministerial cabinet meeting for approval, a team of experts from Afghanistan, the United Nations, the US, and the UK had worked for several months on a draft of the law, to make sure it addresses as many narcotics-related issues as possible, according to the ministry. “The establishment of new tribunals for drug traffickers and the establishment of drug regulation commissions will make our national counter-narcotics campaign more effective. It will also make the life of drug traffickers and smugglers more difficult,” Qaderi noted. The law also establishes a new committee on drug regulation that has the power to regulate the licensing, sale, import and export of all drugs in Afghanistan. At the same time, it establishes the procedures for investigating and prosecuting major drug-trafficking offences. A significant new provision allows the police to obtain a court order permitting the interception of electronic communications such as phone calls. It also states that the proceeds of drug trafficking will be seized and forfeited by the government. Opium poppies began to be cultivated on a large scale in Afghanistan in the early 1980s after bans in neighbouring countries. The desperately poor country now produces about 87 percent of the global crop, the base for nearly all the heroin consumed in Western countries. The UN and the government have estimated the total export value of Afghanistan's opium in 2005 at US $2.7 billion - equivalent to 52 percent of the country's official gross domestic product.