Afghanistan: March 4, 2005

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The illegal drug industry is rapidly growing in Afghanistan. In the last year, the acreage planted in poppies has tripled (to about half a million acres.) It is believed that about 90 percent of the world's heroin now comes from Afghanistan (5,000 tons of opium, much of which is refined into heroin). Most of these drugs go to Asian and European countries. Addiction is becoming a major problem in Iran and Pakistan. Some of this heroin reaches the United States, which still gets half its heroin from Colombia. Burma, along the Chinese border, was long the main source of heroin, but currently only produces about 300 tons of opium a year. 

 

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