The head of Russia’s Federal Service for Narcotics Control has told a UN commission that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has grown by 18 percent.
Viktor Ivanov told a session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna on March 11 that Afghan land under cultivation rose from 131,000 hectares to 154,000 hectares in 2012.
Ivanov said he expected Afghan heroin production to increase after the majority of international forces leave Afghanistan in 2014.
Ivanov said since foreign forces started their operation in Afghanistan in 2001 more than 1 million people worldwide have died from Afghan heroin.
He added that the illegal Afghan drug trade over those nearly 12 years has been worth some $1 trillion.