WORLD'S LARGEST DRUG SUPPLIER: HELMAND PROVINCE

Afghanistan's Helmand province, heartland of Taliban guerrillas
fighting NATO forces, is about to become the world's largest drug
supplier, the United Nations said today.

Helmand, a province in the south of Afghanistan, cultivated more
drugs than entire countries such as Myanmar, Morocco or even
Colombia, the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crimes said in its
2007 World Drug Report.

"Curing Helmand of its drug and insurgency cancer will rid the world
of the most dangerous source of its most dangerous narcotic, and go a
long way to bringing security to the region," said UNODC Director
Antonio Marias Costa in the report's preface.

While the amount of land under illicit poppy cultivation fell by 10
per cent globally between 2000 and 2006, global opium production
soared by 43 per cent to a record high of 6,610 tonnes in 2006 from a
year earlier.

This was due to a shift in output from inferior southeast Asian
fields to more productive ones in Afghanistan - which in 2006
produced 92 per cent of all opium in the world.

Other worrying signs came from Africa, suggesting the impoverished
continent could find itself at the crossroads of international drug crime.

"There are warning signs that Africa is also under attack, targeted
by cocaine traffickers from the west - Colombia - and heroin
smugglers in the east - Afghanistan," the report said.

"This threat needs to be addressed quickly to stamp out drug-related
crime, money-laundering and corruption, and to prevent the spread of
drug use that could cause havoc across a continent already plagued by
other tragedies." The cultivation, production and abuse of almost
every kind of drug around the world - cocaine, heroin, cannabis and
amphetamine-type stimulants - had stabilized overall.

With about 160 million annual customers, cannabis provides the
largest illicit drug market by far. According to UN estimates, global
cannabis herb production eased by 6 per cent to 42,000 tonnes in 2005
from a year earlier.

Cocaine production has remained largely stable over the past few
years. It was estimated at 984 tonnes in 2006 amid signs of a drop in
cultivation in Andean countries, especially Colombia.

Global output of amphetamine-style stimulants was estimated to have
nudged down by 2 per cent to 478 tonnes in 2005.