UK ON OPIUM ALERT

A FLOOD of cheap heroin is heading for the streets of Scotland because of a
massive increase in opium production in Afghanistan since the Taliban were
ousted.

United Nations experts have put European cities on full-scale alert after
they discovered that farmers in the country are threatening to reclaim
their position as the world's biggest producers of illicit heroin.

Farmers are preparing to reap up to 2,700 tonnes of opium, producing some
250 tonnes of pure heroin, in the next few months. The bumper harvest is 14
times bigger than the amount grown in the country last year, when
production was outlawed as 'un-Islamic' by the fundamentalist Taliban regime.

Officials at the UN Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) give international drugs
agencies just a matter of weeks to stop the deadly harvest reaching
lucrative European markets, along the well-trodden 'opium trail' from
Afghanistan's poppy fields through central Asia and the Balkans.

Tony Blair and other world leaders, who pledged to stamp out Afghanistan's
opium trade, are now faced with a difficult decision: whether to destroy
the crops and alienate thousands of Afghan farmers who are depending on the
crop for their living; or spend up to UKP300m buying the entire poppy
harvest off them.

Anti-drugs campaigners in Scotland warned that if any of the opium was
allowed into Europe, it could force down prices and lure a new generation
of people into the clutches of dealers.

Drugs already claim almost 300 lives in Scotland every year, with heroin by
far the biggest killer.

Alistair Ramsay, director of Scotland Against Drugs, said: "The lines of
communication between Scotland and Afghanistan have been disrupted so
dealers have been going elsewhere.

"The big concern now is that if they reopen markets that had been shut down
the price will fall and the number of users will increase.

"We have 55,800 problematic heroin users in Scotland and we don't want to
see that number increase - particularly when statistics suggest that drug
use in this country is falling."

The Taliban's hardline position on heroin and the turmoil that came in the
wake of their defeat has led to a heroin shortage in Scotland in recent
months, sparking a crime-wave among addicts desperate to fund their
increasingly expensive habit.

The price of a standard bag of heroin has shot up from UKP10 to UKP25 - but
now experts fear an over-supply could force the cost back below UKP10.

Police fear that dealers will use the cheap price of the drug to lure
teenagers into trying it out.

An upsurge in heroin abuse only two years ago was blamed on the sudden
arrival of cheap brown heroin on the streets of Scotland - and the trend
for smoking the drug.

One senior police source said: "Pushers capitalised on the situation by
targeting younger people and calling the drug 'brown sugar', rather than
heroin, so it seemed harmless.

"For some reason, people who didn't want to take heroin because it meant
injecting it into their veins found it easy to smoke it. They could also
get hold of it more cheaply.

Officers leading the campaign against drug abuse in Scotland last night
attempted to play down the dangers, insisting it was too early to draw
conclusions from the UN report.

Jim Orr, director of the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency, said: "We
monitor reports on the cultivation of opium as part of the intelligence
picture to tackle this criminal activity.

"Along with other law enforcement partners we continue to assess
developments in Afghanistan and will take appropriate action as necessary."

But former drugs tsar Keith Hellawell - now the Government's expert on the
international drugs trade - warned that the UN survey left only a short
window of opportunity to stop a surge in heroin supply.

He said: "We have got to look at every possibility we have of preventing
that crop from getting into the wrong hands and into a drug that is going
to damage the health of our children."

The UNDCP report covered 208 villages in the main opium-growing areas of
Afghanistan. The survey team declared: "Our opium poppy pre-assessment
survey confirms earlier indications that - after the effective
implementation of the Taliban ban in 2001 - the drug cultivation in the
country has resumed at relatively high levels.

"The estimated production in 2002 might reach between 1,900 and 2,700
metric tonnes, which is less than in a record year of 1999, but close to
the still high levels of mid-1990s. That requires a strong and creative
response."

A total of 26,000 acres of poppy crop had now been planted.

The scale of the increase confounds the efforts of Afghani and
international leaders to stamp out the deadly trade. The country has
traditionally supplied 90% of Europe's heroin, and at least 70% of the
global supply.

Tony Blair cited the destruction of the heroin trade as a key war aim when
committing British support for the US strikes against al-Qaeda and the
Taliban last autumn. Hamid Karzai, leader of the Afghan Interim
Administration (AIA), bowed to international pressure and banned opium
poppy cultivation in January.

But the AIA could not guarantee obedience in all areas of the country, and
hundreds of farmers have since ripped up their wheat-fields and planted
more lucrative valuable crops.

Eastwood Labour MP Jim Murphy claimed only a 'buy and destroy' policy would
save Europe from the heightened risks.

He said: "Either we pay for crop substitution, helping the farmers grow
different products, or we buy the opium from them. It is too late for crop
substitution with this one because they are about to harvest it.

"The only effective way of doing it is a one-off purchase and an amnesty
for the farmers who comply.

"Afghan drugs kill hundreds of Scots every year and the world community
needs to do something about that."

Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane claimed the international community
was helping the AIA to improve its capacity to take on drug barons. But he
refused to confirm reports that a buy-up of the opium harvest was imminent.

MacShane added: "An important element of the international community's
approach will be measures designed to break the dependence on poppy
cultivation of many within Afghanistan.

"The Interim Administration has already introduced a ban on drugs
production, processing and trafficking but it is too early to assess the
impact on areas already under poppy cultivation."

Andrew Horne, operations manager of Turning Point Scotland, a charity which
runs the Drug Crisis Centre in Glasgow, said: "It's a terrible thing to say
but the status quo has its advantages.

"Any fluctuation at all in the level of heroin on the streets creates
problems for treatment services and in terms of crime.

"When there is a bumper crop, the price of heroin falls and more people use
the drug. They don't tend to come in for treatment because it's too easy to
get the drug and it's cheap. If supply is very good then they stay out of
treatment. They just think, 'why bother?' and that causes more people to
use heroin."

[SIDEBAR]

OPIUM TRAIL TO THE STREETS

IT STARTS life as a harmless-looking, floppy plant described as being "like
a cabbage" by former drugs tsar Keith Hellawell, but by the time it has
reached the housing estates of inner-city Scotland, opium is a lethal drug.

Most of Afghanistan's opium is grown on thousands of acres of poppy field
in the north-eastern Helmand province of Kandahar. Once the poppies have
flowered, the seed heads are harvested and converted into morphine base in
local laboratories.

Most of it is then transported into Iran and on to the powerful drugs gangs
in Turkey, where the thick, brown liquid is turned into pure heroin.
Traffickers send the vast majority of the drug through the Balkans in
container lorries, although some of it also passes through former Soviet
states.

Heroin for the British market usually enters the country via Channel ports,
after passing through France, Germany and often Amsterdam. Scottish customs
officials have identified centres including London, Manchester and
Liverpool as key staging-posts for heroin on its way to Scotland. From
there it is distributed to dealers who are mainly concentrated in cities
such as Glasgow and Edinburgh.