The impact of the 2022 ban on drug production in Afghanistan

The production and export of opiates has arguably been Afghanistan’s largest illegal economic activity for decades. Afghanistan’s opium production doubled from 3,400 tons in 2002, the year after the Taliban had been ousted, to 6,800 tons in 2021, the year the Taliban returned to power.  In 2022 the income from just opium poppy cultivation was equivalent to 29 per cent of the value of the country’s entire agricultural sector, while for many years, the total value of exported opiates, including opium and heroin, exceeded the value of officially recorded licit exports of goods and services. Moreover, in recent years, the expansion of methamphetamine manufacture has added another layer of complexity to the illicit drug economy of Afghanistan.

In April 2022, the Taliban de facto authorities announced a ban on the production of all illegal drugs. While the 2022 opium poppy harvest was largely unaffected by the ban, 2023 saw a dramatic decline in the opium economy in the country. Both cultivation of opium poppy and production of opium declined by 95 per cent in 2023. In the context of an already fragile socio-economic situation, the consequences have been dramatic in Afghanistan: farmers for example from the four provinces accounting for three quarter of opium poppy cultivation in 2022 lost about USD 1 billion in income. And this is despite switching to other crops, which may have reduced food imports dependency but generated far less income.  

Until 2022, Afghanistan had been accounting for a major share, often more than 80 per cent, of global illicit opium production, supplying markets in neighbouring countries and subregions but also in Africa and Europe. It has been estimated that until 2022, 80 per cent of all opiate users worldwide consumed opiates from Afghanistan. Therefore, the implementation of the April 2022 ban, if sustained over time, is likely to have a major impact on the global supply of opiates and on opiate demand in the markets traditionally supplied by opiates from Afghanistan.

The proposed session, co-organized by EMCDDA and UNODC, will feature one or two speakers from each organization and possibly from countries along the trafficking routes. It will look into available data to discuss the impact of the ban on supply and demand dynamics for opiates mainly, but also for Afghanistan-sourced methamphetamine: in Afghanistan and in neighbouring countries, and also along trafficking routes towards and in major consumer markets, in particular in Europe.