Afghanistan is in danger of becoming a "narcotic state", or so the International Narcotics Control Board, a United Nations' drugs watchdog body, warned this week, noting that the country's opium production reached near-record levels in 2004. This, however, is a pivotal year in Afghanistan's fight against the drug trade and things are set to change.

Two days after his inauguration last December, Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's first democratically elected president, hosted a conference on fighting the narcotics trade as his first priority. Narcotics not only ruined the lives of Afghanistan's children, he told the conference, they also undermined the economy, distorted the country's image and invited foreign interference in Afghan affairs.