This is progress?

While this finding might suggest progress for some Afghanis, the world is not better off for it. AFP:

‘The amount of the opium being processed (in Afghanistan), I think, is around 90 percent -- at least the lion’s share,’ UNODC representative Christina Oguz told reporters in Kabul.

Oguz said that anyone flying over the major opium producing areas ‘would see a lot of small fires in the mountains. These are heroin labs.’

‘A couple of years ago, most of the drugs that were trafficked out of this country was opium,’ Oguz said.

‘Now more and more of the opium is being processed into morphine and into heroin. And this indicates sophistication that we didn’t have in this country before,’ she added.

Unfortunately, more than $3 billion in revenues "helps finance the Taleban-led insurgency" according to Oguz, of the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime.

Afghanistan is responsible for over 90% of the world's heroin supply, produced from more than 6000 tons of opium.

Afghani farmers need alternative lucrative crops.

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