Heroin from Afghanistan is sweeping through Russia with drug trafficking operations extending across the nation's eleven time zones, a senior government official said Tuesday....

He said that about 70 percent of heroin in Russia originated in Afghanistan, which accounts for about three quarters of the world's opium, the raw material for producing heroin. The opium production in Afghanistan has skyrocketed since the fall of the hardline Taliban regime, which successfully suppressed production....

--Guardian, via AP

(Thanks to BuzzFlash for the link.)