The United Nations Office on Crime and Drugs released a report on the current drug situation in Afghanistan.

From Bloomberg News:

Taliban insurgents will generate at least $100 million from this year’s opium crop in Afghanistan which will almost match the record harvest in 2007, the United Nations said. Cultivation of opium poppies will remain “shockingly high,” Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said in a statement today.

“Afghan drugs and the funds they generate are a destabilizing force,” Costa said. “Europe, Russia and the countries along the Afghan heroin routes should brace themselves again for major health and security consequences.”

Afghanistan provides more than 90 percent of the world’s supply of opium, the raw ingredient for heroin, and the illicit drugs trade helps fund the Taliban insurgency, according to the UN. International efforts to cut opium production are working in the country’s northeast, in contrast to increased cultivation in Taliban strongholds in the southwest, the UNODC said in a report released in Tokyo.

The UNODC stated that a majority of the proceeds are gained by the Taliban imposing a ten percent tax on opium farmers.

Read the full report here.

Afghanistan’s Heroin Market is estimated at $3.1 billion.