Afghanistan's Taliban militia has wiped out the massive opium industry in its territory just a few months after banning the crop as un-Islamic, the United Nations said yesterday.
The UN Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) said a survey last month of more than 2,200 villages in Taliban-controlled areas found no poppy cultivation at all, although last year Afghanistan was the world's biggest producer.
UNDCP representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Mr Bernard Frahi, said he would "buy a bottle of champagne" for anyone who found anything more than scattered opium plants in the inspection areas.
"I'm not saying it (Afghanistan) is poppy free but I can tell you that in Taliban-controlled areas we should not find any poppy this year," he said.
About 82,172 hectares (202,964 acres) were under poppy cultivation in Afghanistan last year, about 10 per cent down from 1999 due to severe drought but still almost 30 per cent more than in 1998, the UN said last month.
The opium crop dropped from a record 4,581 tonnes in 1999 to 3,276 tonnes last year, but remained the world's biggest ahead of Burma.
The survey, which has yet to be officially released, was made by 20 UNDCP officers as part of annual ground-based research conducted since 1994. The main UN drugs agency called today on governments worldwide to clamp down on online drugstores, which bypass dealers and traffickers by offering illicit substances at the click of a mouse.
The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) accepted that Internet trading in drugs was useful, especially for remote areas such as the Australian outback where traditional supply routes are thinly spread.
But, increasingly, online pharmacies are offering drugs without regulation, writing their own prescriptions without doctors being involved or even seeing patients.
Women and children are increasingly turning to drug abuse in Africa, where the scourge is fuelled by war, poverty and crime, a UN report said today.
Drug abuse is on the rise across the continent, as illicit substances become cheaper and cheaper in a region which has traditionally served as a transit point for drugs from Latin America and Asia.