MEXICO IS GROWING MORE OPIUM

WASHINGTON - Opium poppy cultivation almost tripled last
year in Mexico, but there was a big reduction in Pakistan, the
State Department said Friday in a report on drug production
worldwide. Opium poppies are the raw material for heroin.

Despite the increase in Mexico, American officials have consistently
praised the level of cooperation there in combatting narcotics
trafficking.

The study, titled the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report,
also concluded that farmers throughout Afghanistan took advantage of
the collapse of the Taliban militia last November to resume poppy
cultivation.

The Taliban had banned such production but, the report said, no effort
was made to seize stored opium or precursor chemicals or to arrest and
prosecute narcotics traffickers.

On Pakistan, the report said the country has essentially achieved its
ambitious goal of eliminating opium production by the year 2000. The
opium poppy crop fell to a record low of 526 acres last year, with
cultivation concentrated in inaccessible areas.

The report said Mexico effectively eradicated 42,000 acres of poppies
last year but the remaining acreage still yielded 78 tons of opium
gum. That was up from 30 tons of opium gum in 2000, the report said,
adding that at current conversion rates that would mean 7.7 tons of
heroin in 2001 compared with 3.3 in 2000.

Heroin and cocaine are the illicit drugs that most concern the United
States. There probably was an increase in coca production in Colombia
but final figures were not available at publication time, the report
said. Contradicting that estimate, Colombian officials said Thursday
their figures show a dramatic decline.

The State Department said that Colombian police, with U.S. backing,
sprayed nearly twice as much illicit coca in 2001 as the year before.
Coca production levels in Peru and Bolivia, the second- and
third-ranking producing countries, remained essentially stable.

Mexico, in addition to the increase in poppy production last year,
also registered an increase in marijuana production, from 7,700 tons
to 8,140.