Afghanistan poppy cultivation spikes: UN

Afghanistan's opium poppy cultivation this year is up by a third, the UN's drugs agency said yesterday, in its first report on the issue since the hardline Taliban took power in 2021. The UN drugs agency said cultivation in Afghanistan rose by 32 percent to 233,000 hectares over the previous year, making the 2022 crop the third largest area cultivated since monitoring began in 1994. The country is the world's biggest producer of poppies, the source of sap that is refined into heroin. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said prices have soared after the Taliban's ban in April on poppy cultivation. This year's harvest was largely exempted from the decree.