Afghan opium cultivation has soared by 59 per cent this year, largely due to a dramatic increase in the insurgency-hit southern provinces of the country, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said Saturday according to dpa. "These are very alarming numbers. Afghanistan is increasingly hooked on its own drug," UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa told reporters in the Afghan capital Kabul after presenting the results of the UNODC Annual Opium Survey for Afghanistan to President Hamid Karzai. The survey showed the area under opium cultivation reached a record 165,000 hectares in 2006 compared with 104,000 in 2005.
