Opium Production

The looming pullout of Western forces from Afghanistan could lead to an economic collapse and the strengthening of the country's opium economy, the UN anti-drug chief warned Wednesday.

China and Southeast Asian nations have renewed their vows in the fight against illegal drug use and the drug trade. The UNODC officiated.

Afghan farmers are cultivating more opium than last year, officials said Monday.

Opium -- boon, bane, or both? We review three recent books on various aspects of the poppy and its derivatives.

With The Lebanese Connection, global drug trade scholar Jonathan Marshall has made an important contribution to the literature -- not only of the drug trade, but also of the Middle East, terrorism, covert operations, and failed states.

We review "Drugs, Insecurity, and Failed States: The Problems of Prohibition," a new book from the very establishment International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Iran executed nearly 500 people for drug crimes last year, according to a new report from Iran Human Rights, a Norway-based NGO. Drug executions made up more than 70% of all executions in the Islamic Republic.

We go around the world to find the most important international drug policy stories of 2011.

No "Frankenfungi" for the drug warriors just yet -- we don't know enough about the dangers of using mycoherbicides to eradicate drug crops to be doing that, a panel of scientists from the National Research Council says.

There's a bumper crop of Afghan opium this year.