SO BEAUTIFUL –
Sept. 30, 2025 – Afghanistan used to have the distinction of producing the opium for 95 per cent of the heroin on the European market, and about 80 percent of the world’s illicit supply. But since the ruling Taliban announced a ban on growing the crop in 2022—it was already technically illegal, but the announcement amounted to increased threats—cultivation has plummeted.
The crackdown was largely implemented in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. Local authorities enforced the ban, and major suppliers and larger farms were able to offset lost income by drawing down opium stocks they’d built up during boom times in the previous five years.
Did the poppy ban in Afghanistan succeed? Not really. Afghan farmers crossed the border into Pakistan and planted poppy in the remote province of Baluchistan. Pakistan is now the “world’s new capital of opium production.”
“Necessity has driven cultivation shifts to less conspicuous areas.”
“The Taliban’s opium ban was initially lauded as successful but as critics anticipated, without addressing issues of rural and land poverty, and unemployment, the ban was unlikely to hold,” Julia Buxton, professor of justice at Liverpool John Moores University, told Filter. “Necessity has driven cultivation shifts to less conspicuous areas from the south to the northeast of Afghanistan and displacement into Pakistan.”
