Nato has agreed its troops will be allowed to attack opium factories for the first time in Afghanistan.
Alliance spokesman James Appathurai said troops will act with Afghan forces "against facilities and facilitators" using drugs to finance the Taleban.
Agreement was reached during a meeting of Nato defence ministers in Budapest.
Nato countries have been under pressure from US officials, who want more aggressive tactics against the booming opium trade in Afghanistan.
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Mr Appathurai said participation would be "subject to the authorisation of respective nations".
'Scourge'
Nato's top operations commander Gen John Craddock attended the Budapest talks to push for more concerted action by alliance members.
He told them the Afghan opium trade is bankrolling the Taleban insurgency to the tune of $100m (Ј57m) a year.
"You cannot have a safe and secure environment with a scourge of narcotics rampant," he told Reuters news agency on Thursday.
His remarks come amid anxiety that opium production far exceeds global demand and that international drug cartels must have stockpiled huge quantities.
The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, is urging the international community to "find the missing opium".
"These stockpiles are a time bomb for public health and global security," he has said.
It is estimated that bumper poppy harvests have yielded twice as much opium as needed to satisfy every known heroin user on the planet.
British law enforcement officers working undercover in southern Afghanistan are reporting seizures of "enormous quantities of precursors" - the chemicals required to process opium - suggesting vast amounts of heroin may be hidden in the lawless region.
(BBC)
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