Afghanistan opium survey 2009

• United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

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02 October 2009The bottom is starting to fall out of the Afghan opium market. For the second year in a row, cultivation, production, work-force, prices, revenues, exports and its GDP share are all down, while the number of poppy-free provinces and drug seizures continue to rise.

Yet, Afghan drugs still have catastrophic consequences. They fund criminals, insurgents, and terrorists in Afghanistan and abroad. Collusion with corrupt government officials keeps undermining public trust, security, and the law. The taint of money-laundering is harming the reputation of banks in the Gulf, and farther afield.

The vulnerable are most at risk: drug use in Afghanistan is a growing problem, particularly among refugees. Drug addiction and HIV are spreading death and misery along opiate trafficking routes, particularly in Central Asia and Russia. Around the world, but especially in Europe, once again tens of thousands will die this year from heroin overdoses.

It is therefore essential to use this time of political change in Afghanistan to analyze the forces that are shrinking the opium market, and those needed to push further this process which is vulnerable to relapse.