AFGHANISTAN, MYANMAR TOP DRUGS BLACKLIST - UN REPORT

Afghanistan, Myanmar and Colombia are by far the world's biggest
producers of heroin and cocaine, supplying an overall market of some
180 million people worldwide, a UN report said Monday.

But the report, by the United Nations Office for Drug Control and
Crime Prevention (UNDCP), welcomed crackdowns by many other countries
which have cut supplies substantially.

"Thanks to a 'get-serious' approach on the part of most major coca and
opium poppy producing countries, production is now limited to fewer
countries than ever before," said the report.

"Afghanistan and Myanmar together account for about 90 percent of
global illicit opium production, and Colombia alone is responsible for
two-thirds of global coca leaf production," it said.

But the UN report noted that production of the world's two "main
problem drugs", cocaine and heroin, was on the downturn.

Between 1993 and 1999, the coca leaf harvests and cocaine production
fell by some 20 percent, and in the last year the production of opium,
heroin's key ingredient, has fallen by 17 percent, according to the
report.

And, it added, the number of consumers picking up the finished product
has stabilized or even declined. In the late 1990s, some 4.2 percent
of the world's population over 15 -- 180 million people -- were
consuming drugs.

Poverty reduction, conflict resolution and mediation must play a role
in the reduction and eradication of drug production, the report said.

The Colombian authorities' crackdown on the country's drug trade,
which would deal a major blow to rebel political forces financed by
drug sales, has some critics worried it will exacerbate a conflict
that has claimed an estimated 130,000 lives since 1964.

In Afghanistan, fears are mounting that a ban on opium cultivation
could spur the exodus of refugees already fleeing drought and war.

Afghan farmers say growing other crops won't meet the rising cost of
living, and warn they will move their production to neighbouring Pakistan.

Alternative development projects are one way for countries to climb
out of this situation, and the report pointed to the "success" of such
projects in Bolivia, Pakistan and Thailand.

In the West, the report noted that the consumption of cocaine in the
United States had fallen by a large 70 percent from 1985 to 1999, with
a 40 percent reduction in overall drug use.