Illicit trade in drugs in Russia fetches up to $10 billion a year — nearly a tenth of government budget revenues — a drug control officer was quoted by Reuters as saying on Thursday.

Oleg Kharichkin, deputy head of the Federal Drugs Control Service, said much of the drug trade was taken up by opiates, although the share of synthetic drugs, such as amphetamines, was growing, particularly among young users.

“Our preliminary figures for the size of the drugs business is about $8 to 10 billion this year,” he told reporters. The Russian budget, meanwhile, is expecting revenues of 3.10 trillion rubles ($106.9 billion) next year.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, was set to present a world drugs report in the Russian capital, said Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Safronov, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. The drug specialist was set to arrive in Moscow Thursday.

Drug use in Russia has boomed since the collapse of the Soviet Union and helped push up rates in associated illnesses like HIV/AIDS. Kharichkin said there were about half a million drug users in the country.

Russia is also a key transit route for opiate trafficking from Afghanistan to Western Europe, and foreign governments are anxiously watching the country’s drug agency —- founded a year ago —- to see if it can curb the trans-shipments.

Officials are concerned that the flow of drugs into Russia could increase when it pulls its border guards away from the Tajik-Afghan border, a major transit point for drugs bound for Europe.

“It is hard to say what proportion of the drugs we seized were going to Europe, maybe a half, maybe a third. But it is almost certain that at least a fifth would have ended up there,” Kharichkin was quoted by Reuters as saying.

In the first five months of the year, Kharichkin said Russia’s drug agency had seized some 900 kg (1,980 pounds) of heroin. The total haul this year looks certain to surpass the previous record of about 950 kg of heroin seized in 2000.

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