U.N. says Afghanistan getting help in heroin production process

The United Nations said Monday that Afghanistan should not shoulder all of the blame for the global heroin problem, Agence France-Presse reported the same day.

While over 93 percent of the world’s opium comes from the war-torn nation, the chemicals used to turn the crop into heroin are smuggled from China, South Korea, the Russian Federation, Europe and other nations, according to U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Afghanistan representative Christina Oguz. She said the chemicals are produced for industrial purposes and in most cases legally exported, only to be diverted and smuggled once they reach their destination point.

Oguz also noted that government corruption in Afghanistan is undermining efforts to punish drug lords.

“They are people with power and people with powerful friends who can use their mobile phones to release a suspect from detention without a fair trial,” she said of the drug lords. “I would call it telephone justice.”

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