PRODUCTION of the raw crop that produces cocaine soared by more than a quarter in Colombia last year, mocking a multibillion-dollar US effort to eradicate it.

Production of the raw crop that produces cocaine soared by more than a quarter in Colombia last year, mocking a multi-billion dollar US effort to eradicate it.

Opium cultivation in rebel-controlled areas in southern Afghanistan is expected to grow this year, a UN report said today.

Afghanistan produced dramatically more opium in 2006, increasing its yield by roughly 49% from a year earlier and pushing global opium production to a new record high, a UN report said today.

A “cancer of insurgency” in southern Afghanistan could drive the 2007 opium poppy harvest to record levels, the UN drug agency chief warned.

DRUGS strategy minister Noel Ahern has outlined his concerns over a boom in the supply of heroin, following a sharp increase in opium cultivation in Afghanistan.

COLOMBIAN cocaine traffickers are targeting Ireland in an effort to open up new supply routes into Europe, the United Nations' leading drugs expert has said.

Cultivation of opium poppies declined in Afghanistan last year for the first time since 2001, a success that saw one in every five farmers abandon the drug-producing plant for legal crops, a UN report said today.

Afghanistan’s interior minister, one of the most prominent faces in President Hamid Karzai’s Cabinet, has announced his resignation after struggling to combat Afghanistan’s booming drug trade.

Russia and China called on the United Nations yesterday to take the lead in the global fight against terrorism.

Stable prices for heroin and a likely increase in the drug’s purity could lead to an increase in the number of overdose deaths, the UN drug agency warned today.

BUMPER opium crops in Afghanistan will result in a glut of cheap heroin and could trigger another epidemic in Ireland, drug experts warned yesterday.

Afghanistan has again established itself as the world’s largest opium poppy producer, with growers taking advantage of a power vacuum during the US-led war and the collapse of the Taliban regime, the UN drug control agency said today.