The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has issued its 2013 World Drug Report that shows the use of traditional drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, seems to be declining in some parts of the world, prescription drug abuse and new psychoactive substance abuse is growing. In Europe, heroin use seems to be declining. Meanwhile, the cocaine market seems to be expanding in South America and the emerging economies in Asia. Use of opiates (heroin and opium), on the other hand, remains stable (around 16 million people, or 0.4 per cent of the population aged 15-64), although a high prevalence of opiate use has been reported from South-West and Central Asia, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and North America.

The report says, in terms of production, Afghanistan retained its position as the lead producer and cultivator of opium globally (75 per cent of global illicit opium production in 2012). The global area under opium poppy cultivation amounted to 236,320 ha and was thus 14 per cent higher than in 2011. Nonetheless, given a poor yield, owing to a plant disease affecting the opium poppy, in Afghanistan, global opium production fell to 4,905 tons in 2012, 30 per cent less than a year earlier and 40 per cent less than in the peak year of 2007. 

Similarly, according to the previous Afghanistan 2013 Assessment Report, the rise in production has been due to high prices for last few years and harvest has now spread to areas which were previously poppy-free. It further says poppy cultivation is not only expected to expand in areas where it already existed in 2012 but also in new areas or in areas where poppy cultivation was stopped. Villages with a low level of security and those which had not received agricultural assistance in the previous year were significantly more likely to grow poppy in 2013.

The increase has been significant in Southern provinces. More than a third of Afghanistan's total opium production now takes place in Helmand and Kandahar.

The percentage of increase shows an alarming situation, particularly at a time when the country is in transition. More help is needed to provide alternatives to farmers, in law enforcement support and in cooperation from other countries in the region.

The government and international forces should enforce the poppy eradication campaign. Aside from the fact that a huge part of the financial support to insurgents come from transport and smuggling of opium, it’s also exporting deaths to millions of people around the world, and the number of drug addicts increasing in Afghanistan.