This report presents an over-all picture for 1955 of the legal trade in narcotics throughout the world as it is shown by the analysis of the statistics submitted to the Board by governments, in pursuance of the international conventions of 19 February 1925 and 13 July 1931, and of the Protocol of 19 November 1948. Extracts of the report of the Permanent Central Opium Board follow. They are, in the order of magnitude of their production in 1955, India, Turkey, USSR and Iran. As from 1956, Iran, where opium-poppy cultivation was prohibited by the Act of 7 October 1955, will cease to appear as one of this group.
Production shows a different trend in each producing country.
In India, it has gone down, from 438 tons in 1954 to 362 tons in 1955. In Iran, it declined from 144 tons in 1954 to 95 tons in 1955. Taken as a whole, the production of these four countries has risen from 756 tons in 1954 to 788 tons in 1955. In Pakistan, on the other hand, it dropped from 4.6 to 2.6 tons. Excluding production in Afghanistan, for which an estimate is now for the first time submitted by the Government of that country, and which is set at 30 tons for 1955, the total output of the smaller producing countries was 34 tons in 1955.