Production in Thailand increased in 1996 despite an aggressive eradication campaign, but remained minimal, accounting for only about one per cent of Southeast Asian production. The USG's first survey of drug cultivation in Vietnam revealed 3,150 hectares of opium poppy, potentially capable of yielding 25 metric tons of opium gum. Opium poppy cultivation dropped by 9 percent in Southwest Asia, after a 45 percent rise the year before. Afghanistan's poppy crop, the largest in the region, declined marginally. Pakistan 's cultivation, on the other hand, fell by more than half following extension of the poppy ban in the Northwest Frontier Provinces.
Afghan opium is the source of most of Europe's heroin.
Sophisticated Pakistani trafficking organizations operating out of Quetta, Pakistan, smuggle heroin base and morphine out of Afghanistan to the international market. These groups place orders with the Afghani processors and arrange for transshipment of the drugs from Afghanistan through Pakistan and to Iranian or Turkish buyers who move it through Iran and into international drug channels. Most Afghan opium is destined for processing into heroin in Turkey. The finished heroin is sold primarily in Europe, while a limited quantity goes to the United States Southwest Asian heroin continues to pour into Europe along the Balkan Route. Turkish trafficking groups, with distributors in ethnic enclaves in major European cities, control much of the Balkan Route heroin trade.