蜜芽传媒

Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has increased by a third this year, according to a new report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The UNODC says prices have also soared in spite of the Taliban鈥檚 ban on poppy cultivation, with the income made by farmers from opium sales tripling from $425 million in 2021 to $1.4 billion in 2022.

Dr Angela May is chief of the UNODC鈥檚 Research and Trend Analysis Unit. She told Newsday: 鈥淭his is only the income the farmers are making, the large profits will be made by the traffickers that take the opium from the farmers鈥� on the route from Afghanistan to Europe.鈥�

(Picture: Workers collect poppy tears or raw opium at a poppy plantation in Zhari district in Kandahar on March 28th 2022. Credit: Javed Tanveer / AFP via Getty Images.)