Anti-Poppy Program Has Failed, U.N. Says
The new Afghan government has “largely failed” in its 4-month-old effort to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppies, the raw material for heroin, U.N. crop experts said.
Their figures show the 2002 crop is close to the high levels of the late 1990s and could be worth more than $1 billion at the farm level in Afghanistan--about 5% of the nation’s gross domestic product.
The former Taliban regime had banned poppy cultivation in 2000, and production dropped to near zero. But the fall of the Taliban late last year prompted farmers to plant poppy again over tens of thousands of acres.
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