The Taliban’s Afghan Drug Ban Hasn’t Slowed Europe’s Heroin Trade

In April 2022, less than a year after it took power in Kabul, the Taliban announced it would prohibit the cultivation, production, trafficking, trade and consumption of all narcotics in Afghanistan. At the time, many observers were skeptical of both the group’s sincerity, due to the revenues it had long generated from the drugs industry, and its ability to enforce the ban.

Two years later, however, new evidence suggests that the Taliban’s narcotics ban has kept poppy cultivation at historically low levels for a second consecutive year. As a result, many experts have raised legitimate concerns that a resulting heroin shortfall in Europe could lead to an influx of highly potent synthetic opioids to fill the gap. In the U.S. and Canada, these synthetic opioids have caused the deadliest drug crisis in North American history.

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