Britain has called for more European Union action to help Afghanistan fight soaring opium production, which has resulted in heroin flooding Europe.
Afghanistan is the world's largest opium producer. For poor Afghan farmers opium is far more lucrative than other crops.
"Afghan heroin is plaguing Europe. Seventy five per cent of the heroin that finds it way onto our streets comes from Afghanistan," British Home Office Minister Caroline Flint said.
The United Nations has called for US-led forces in Afghanistan to be used in the fight against local drug trafficking, a trade estimated to be worth over €2 billion. It estimates 15 million people worldwide are battling with dependency on opiates, such as heroin.
Britain is organising a conference in Kabul in January, where Ms Flint said Afghan authorities would be able to specify the international help they need.
Washington and EU countries are already helping with training Afghanistan's police in fighting narcotics.
Large-scale poppy farming resumed after US forces ousted the Taliban, a regime that previously received American subsidies to eliminate its cultivation.
The most up-to-date UN figures show that in 2002, Afghanistan produced 76 per cent of all heroin on the world market. It supplied just 12 per cent in 2001, the year the Taliban was routed.
Afghanistan's former Islamist rulers had clamped down on opium production, but poppies now flourish under the protection of warlords.