Taliban Power-Grab Over Opium Production Sparked Surge In Fentanyl Use
29th June 2024
For years, Afghanistan has been the world’s premier cultivator of poppy used as the base for heroin distributed in Europe, Africa and Canada according to the key findings of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) World Drug Report 2024, while the Americas have largely been supplied with product derived from poppy plantations in Mexico and Colombia.
With the Taliban retaking power in April 2022, the new Afghan government instituted a strict ban on the cultivation of poppy, not only curtailing the supply of illicit substances like heroin but also that of medical prescription opioids.
As a result, potential opium production dropped by 95 percent between 2022 and 2023 to 333 tons.
As Statista’s Florian Zandt shows in the chart below, based on UNODC data, this change makes Myanmar the country with the highest opium production potential in 2023.