AFGHANISTAN: AFGHANISTAN OPIUM PRODUCTION DOWN

Cultivation of opium poppies decreased in Afghanistan this year for
the first time since 2001, a success that saw one in every five
farmers abandon the drug-producing plant for legal crops, a United
Nations report said yesterday. The decision by some 50,000 farmers to
give up the highly lucrative poppy was undercut by the 2005 crop
being one of the best in years. As a result, production declined just
2.5 percent, with Afghanistan still accounting for 87 percent of the
world's supply, the UN Office for Drugs and Crime said. Still, even
that shift suggested Afghanistan's drug-eradication program, begun in
2004, is having some effect on poppy production and legal sectors of
the economy are expanding, the report said.