ISLAMABAD, Oct 31: With the resurgence of massive poppy cultivation in Afghanistan over the past few years, Pakistan has once again become an attractive transit route for smugglers to transport drug to western countries showing an increase of over 20 per cent within a year.

The most disturbing part of the spread of menace is that the number of drug addicts in Pakistan has hit the five million mark though there was not a single drug user here before 1979 when Afghanistan came under former Soviet Union’s military occupation.

The statistics presented at the 18th administrative meeting of the contact points of the world customs organisation (WCO) here on Tuesday showed that following massive production in Afghanistan, the value of opiates exports/smuggling to neighbouring countries including Pakistan has increased to $3 billion during the fiscal year 2006 from $2.5 billion in 2002, indicating an increase of 20 per cent.

Of the total drug addicts in Pakistan, heroin addicts were 1.5m, opium, morphine and psychotropic drugs 3.5m, injection drug users (IDUs) 0.2m. Most of the drug addicts were in the age group of 25 to 35 years. Moreover, 23 per cent of the IDUs were HIV positive.

The reasons behind this resurgence of opiates mainly attributed to presence of allied forces in Afghanistan, people are poor and poppy cultivation is profitable, lack of funding by donor agencies and leverage to attract development package.

Opiates have been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years, and are still being used as pain killers.

Three categories that opiates fall into are naturally occurring-opium, morphine, codeine and thebaine; semisynthetic, and synthetic heroin in powder form.

The statistics showed that the value of exports/smuggling of opiates of Afghanistan remained within the range of $2 bn to 2.7 bn during the last four years in Afghanistan.