PAKISTAN LAUNCHES PLAN FOR DRUG-FREE SOCIETY

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan on Saturday launched a 56.6
million U.S. dollar plan to achieve a drug-free society and complete
elimination of poppy cultivation by the year 2002.

Interior Minister Chaudri Shujaat Hussain told a press conference the
plan is aimed primarily at reducing the demand for narcotics by
educating low-income people and youths and by launching crop
substitution programs in 10 poppy-growing areas in the tribal belt
adjoining Afghanistan.

For several years Pakistan has been on the narcotics watch list of the
United States but the U.S. administration Friday night granted full
certification to Pakistan, recognizing its efforts at drug control.

The U.S. issues a certificate each year to drug-producing countries
and failure to issue the certificate makes that country liable to
international sanctions.

Hussain claimed that antinarcotics authorities have busted all the
heroin processing laboratories in Pakistan and now Pakistan is only a
transit country for drugs from Afghanistan to Europe, the U.S. and
other destinations.

Official figures released by the Interior Ministry revealed that
poppies were being cultivated on 2,000 acres only, as compared with
80, 000 acres in 1980, and that antinarcotics agencies seized 1,108
kilograms of heroin, 1,468 kg of opium and 27,172 kg of cannabis last
year.

Hussain said drug abuse has become one of the major problems in
Pakistan since a big chunk of narcotics previously smuggled abroad is
now being dumped in the local market because of strong enforcement
measures.

Pakistan currently has 4.5 million addicts and nearly two million of
them are hooked on heroin.

Antidrug efforts and the crop substitution program in Pakistan are
being carried out in collaboration with the U.N. Drug Control Agency.