METH, OPIUM PRODUCTION DROPS

The U.S. war on drugs has succeeded in curbing methamphetamine
production in the United States and opium cultivation in Afghanistan,
the United Nations said in a report released yesterday.

But new challenges emerged as meth production found a new home in
Mexico and the opium business shifted farther south in
Afghanistan.

Antonio Maria Costa, director-general of the U.N. Office on Drugs and
Crime (UNODC), released the group's "2006 World Drug Report" in
Washington. For the first time, U.S. government officials participated
because of their interest in drug problems in Afghanistan and Latin
America.

The report said U.S. authorities continued to lead the world in
shutting down meth laboratories, seizing 17,199 such labs in 2004, the
last year for which figures were released.

However, many "super labs," capable of manufacturing more than 11
pounds of meth a day, have moved south of the border. Mexicans told
UNODC that 99 percent of local production in 2004 was intended for
sale to the United States, the report said.

Karen Tandy, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA), testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week
that "roughly 80 percent of the methamphetamine used in the United
States comes from these larger labs, which are increasingly found in
Mexico."

"These same Mexican criminal organizations control most midlevel and
retail methamphetamine distribution in the Pacific, Southwest, and
west-central regions of the United States, as well as much of the
distribution in the Great Lakes and Southeast regions," Mrs. Tandy
said.

The U.N. report said meth seizures along the U.S.-Mexico border almost
doubled from 2002 to 2004, confirming this trend.

"For the first time, the DEA and Mexico are trading personnel, sharing
information, and we are even training about 1,000 Mexican special
police and giving them equipment to hit hot spots in Mexico," Mrs.
Tandy said yesterday.

Regarding another of the report's main findings, Mr. Costa commended
U.S. efforts to contain and eliminate opium cultivation in
Afghanistan, which resulted in a 21 percent decrease in 2005, marking
the first reduction since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

"This is because there are courts now in Afghanistan and President
[Hamid] Karzai has shown outstanding leadership. We are giving
planters new economic prospects. Afghans want a future, and they
realize that the Taliban and drug lords stand in the way of that,"
said John P. Walters, director of the White House's Office of National
Drug Control Policy.

Mr. Costa noted that the overall decrease does not take into account
regional differences. For example, cultivation dropped from 69,715
acres to 2,700 acres in the Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan,
while cultivation increased to 32,096 acres from 12,254 acres in the
southern province of Kandahar.

Although the 2006 numbers have not been released, the report indicated
an increase in opium-poppy planting, especially in southern regions.