KABUL - The head of the United Nations drug and crime agency has called on Afghanistan to address the “growing problem of domestic drug consumption” in the country, which is the largest producer and cultivator of opium in the world.

“There are more than one million opiate addicts in Afghanistan, which represents a national tragedy. We must provide more support to these people, many of them women and children, through continued work in the area of drug treatment and prevention," said the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Yury Fedotov, in a meeting with Afghanistan’s Counter-Narcotics Minister, Din Mohammad Mobarez Rashidi, at the UN agency’s headquarters in the Austrian capital of Vienna, last week.

According to a UNODC news release, Mr. Fedotov also stressed that the illicit drug trade was “a severe threat to public health, good governance and sustainable development in West and Central Asia as well as elsewhere.”

Despite some progress in restraining cultivation, trafficking and use of illicit drugs in Afghanistan, it still remains a “critical challenge” for the country, according to a joint report of the UNODC and the Government of Afghanistan (GoA), released in last November.

The latest UNODC-GoA survey has found that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan rose to record levels last year with a 36 per cent increase compared to 2012.

Describing the findings of the survey as “sobering” at the time of its launch last November, Mr. Fedotov had said, “What is needed is an integrated, comprehensive response to the drug problem, embedded in a long-term security, development and institution-building agenda.”

In the UNODC news release, Mr. Fedotov also noted positive achievements “in strengthening the Afghan counter-narcotics agencies, as well as regional drug seizures and greater coordination among nations countering opiates.”

Last November, Afghan authorities had destroyed in a bonfire in the capital, Kabul, 20 tons of illicit narcotics, precursor materials and alcohol – seized by Afghan authorities in raids in Kabul and its outskirts over the past ten months.

Following his meeting with the UNODC chief, Afghan Minister Rashidi said he was determined “to continue with the fight against narcotics,” according to the UNODC news release.

“But without the increased commitment and efforts of the international community, it will be difficult to achieve lasting success,” he added.

Mr. Fedotov noted that the Government was encouraged by an increase in its eradication campaign, and by the fact that 90 per cent of all cultivation occurs in only nine provinces, in the country’s south and west, which include the most insurgency-ridden provinces in the country. But, he said, “the illicit drug trade remains a major threat.”

"For too long the threats of illicit drugs, crime and corruption have been neglected in efforts to shore up the security and stability of Afghanistan. We need to ensure that these issues are made national priorities," the UNODC chief said.

He added that alternative livelihoods programmes for farmers involved in the illicit trade could only truly succeed when they had the markets and the necessary infrastructure to sell their crops.

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