FILE PHOTO: Raw opium from a poppy head is seen at a poppy farmer's field on the outskirts of Jalalabad, April 28, 2015. REUTERS/Parwiz/File Photo
VIENNA (Reuters) - The Taliban-ordered crash in opium production in Afghanistan, long the world's dominant supplier, could drive up overdose deaths as heroin users switch to synthetic opioids already proving deadly in Europe, a U.N. report said on Wednesday.
The cultivation of opium, from which heroin is made, fell by 95% in Afghanistan last year after the Taliban banned the production of narcotics in 2022. Although opium production in Myanmar increased by 36% last year, it still fell globally by 75%, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its annual World Drug Report published on Wednesday.
