Beijing Believes Afghanistan's Drug Problem Requires Enhanced International Cooperation

The problem of mass drug production in Afghanistan poses a threat to the whole international community and therefore requires the countries around the world to consolidate their efforts and enhance cooperation to tackle this challenge, Chinese Assistant Minister of Public Security Liu Yuejin said on Tuesday.

BEIJING (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th November, 2018) The problem of mass drug production in Afghanistan poses a threat to the whole international community and therefore requires the countries around the world to consolidate their efforts and enhance cooperation to tackle this challenge, Chinese Assistant Minister of Public Security Liu Yuejin said on Tuesday.

"The Afghan drug problem is a challenge not only for Afghanistan, but for the entire international community as well, all parties concerned should strengthen political intentions and practical cooperation in combating drugs in this country, form a comprehensive and balanced anti-drug strategy, expand international cooperation to curb production and supply of drugs," Liu said during the session of the Paris Pact Initiative (PPI) in Beijing.

According to the official, the efforts made by the international community so far helped achieve certain results but the problem of opium poppy cultivation and subsequent heroin production from opium remains extremely acute.

"High purity heroin produced in Afghanistan is smuggled all over the world, the drug problem worries the Afghan government, threatens the security, stability and socioeconomic development of Afghanistan, its neighbors and all countries around the world," Liu added.

The assistant minister also noted that heroin smuggled from Afghanistan accounted for around 15 percent of all heroin in China.

Afghanistan has been one of the world's leading heroin suppliers for more than two decades. Mass drug production hampers the efforts made to stabilize the situation in the country, where the government has been long fighting insurgents and terrorist movements, as drugs serve as an important source of income for such groups, namely, for the Taliban.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), a drastic increase in opium production was registered in Afghanistan in 2017 � opium poppy was cultivated on around 328,000 hectares of land, marking an over 63 percent surge compared to 2016, while the production itself skyrocketed by 87 percent to its record high level of 9,000 tonnes.

The PPI was established in 2003 as an international partnership aimed at tackling the illicit traffic of drugs coming from Afghanistan. The Paris Pact currently comprises 58 countries and more than 20 organizations, including UNODC.