Afghan opium 'should be licensed'
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Afghan poppies should be used to make opium rather than be destroyed, UK politicians say.
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Afghan leaders are considering offering amnesty to drug smugglers who get out of the country's booming narcotics industry and invest their profits in national reconstruction, senior officials told The Associated Press.
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Living in Afghanistan, the world's unrivalled producer of heroin, Faqirullah has no problem finding drugs to feed his habit. What concerns him is getting the cash to buy them.
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Washington announces a major new initiative to try to tackle the production of illegal drugs in Afghanistan.
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A record opium crop in Afghanistan is likely to renewed debate about the United Statesâ troubled $600 million counternarcotics program there.
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The United Nations warned nearly  90 countries including the United States and most of Europe on  Thursday to prepare for more deaths from heroin overdoses  because of surging opium production in Afghanistan.
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Afghanistan, the world's biggest opium producer, is set for another bumper crop of opium poppies in 2008, providing a windfall for the Taliban, which taxes farmers to finance its fight against government and foreign forces, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said Wednesday. Production rose 34...
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The US-led drive to eradicate opium poppy fields in Afghanistan is a waste of money that plays into the hands of Taliban insurgents, a former US ambassador to the United Nations claimed Wednesday.
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The lives of British soldiers in Afghanistan are being put at risk because failure to develop a coherent strategy for eradicating the country's opium poppies has led to the Taliban forming an alliance with heroin traders, a highly critical parliamentary report warns today.
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A UN survey released this week showed Afghanistan this year supplied 87 percent of the world&#39;s opium - the raw material for heroin - following record-high cultivation that has skyrocketed since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
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The United Nations warned nearly 90 countries including the United States and most of Europe on Thursday to prepare for more deaths from heroin overdoses because of surging opium production in Afghanistan.
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BALKH, Afghanistan  - As Afghanistan struggles to cut its raging opium production, aid workers try to find alternative crops, but for some former poppy farmers the choice was easy -- they planted marijuana instead.
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The Afghan leader Hamid Karzai has said the country&#39;s rampant drugs trade is a national disgrace. He said that if it was not brought under control, it could present a more serious threat than the Russian invasion of Afghanistan 25 years ago.
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Afghanistan says it needs more money to persuade farmers to stop growing opium poppies.
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Afghanistan says its war on drugs is the top priority after a UN report warned it risked becoming a narco-state with opium cultivation jumping to record levels, but it says it opposes aerial spraying of opium fields.
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KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 27 â Opium cultivation in Afghanistan grew by 17 percent in 2007, reaching record levels for the second straight year, according to a United Nations report released Monday.
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Opium production has soared to "frightening record levels" in Afghanistan, which now has more land producing drugs than Columbia, Bolivia and Peru combined, the United Nations said on Monday.