Afghanistan back as top poppy producer

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.

This year’s production follows a sharp decline in 2001, when the Taliban were enforcing a ban on poppy cultivation, the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention said in a report released in Rome.