U.N. calls for tougher anti-opium fight

NEW YORK, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- Afghanistan's opium trade is causing worldwide devastation through increased addiction, the spread of the HIV virus and rising terrorism, a U.N. report said.

The U.N. drug and crime tsar says intensified efforts are needed to combat the multibillion-dollar opium trade, the U.N. News Center reported.

The report from the U.N. Offices on Drugs and Crime said Afghanistan produces almost all the world's opium, from which heroin is made. The global opium market is estimated at $65 billion and the number of addicts is estimated at 15 million, with an annual death rate of 100,000.

The report said Afghanistan traffics some 900 tons of opium and 350 tons of heroin annually across its porous borders, over Balkan and Eurasian drug routes and into Europe, Russia, India and China.

"I urge the friends of Afghanistan to recognize that, to a large extent, these uncomfortable truths may be the result of their benign neglect," UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said.

Because of corruption and lawlessness in Afghanistan and its uncontrolled borders, the report said only 2 per cent of opiates produced there are seized by authorities.

"The Afghanistan-Pakistan border region has turned into the world's largest free trade zone in anything and everything that is illicit -- drugs of course, but also weapons, bomb-making equipment, chemical precursors, drug money, even people and migrants," Costa said.