In yet another embarrassment for Islamabad, a UN report has revealed that Pakistan is the main country through which narcotics produced in Afghanistan are transported to the rest of the world.
The World Drug Report released on Tuesday names ‘Karachi’ as the key point on the drug supply routes.
“Pakistan is considered the main transit country for narcotics produced in neighbouring Afghanistan (heroin and opium in particular) and Karachi is the city... that had a key position on the transit routes,” Cesar Guedes, a senior official of the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC), was quoted as saying by The Dawn.
The UNDOC report says that approximately 43 per cent of the Afghan opiates are trafficked through Pakistan.
The report further discloses that about five per cent of the adult population, or nearly 250 million people aged between 15 and 64, used at least one drug in 2014.
The UNDOC report reveals that while drug-related mortality had remained stable around the world, still around 207,000 drug-related deaths were reported in 2014.
The report also indicates that the use of ‘Heroin’ and related overdose deaths appear to have increased sharply over the past two years in some countries in North America and Western and Central Europe.
