At its peak in 2017, annual opium production was valued at $1.4 billion, or 7.4% of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, according to the United Nations. That tumbled to $400 million, or roughly 2% of GDP, in 2020 because of falling prices for the narcotic in the face of competition from synthetic opioids and methamphetamines.
The Taliban knows first-hand how difficult it is to sustain a ban. The first time the group ruled Afghanistan, it prohibited poppy cultivation in 2000, reducing acreage by 90% and cutting the world’s supply of heroin by two-thirds. But the edict also plunged farmers into debt, leading to an unemployment crisis that damaged support for the Taliban in the run-up to its ouster by U.S. forces and their allies in 2001.
“If the Taliban do try to introduce draconian measures to deal with drugs, they will undermine their support base and exacerbate the humanitarian and development crisis currently affecting much of the population,” he said.Advertisement Also undermining interdiction efforts were Afghan government officials and authorities who accepted bribes or even engaged in smuggling. In 2005, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents found about 10 tons of opium stashed inside the offices of the governor of Helmand province, the center of Afghanistan’s poppy belt.
The truth is finally being revealed the true reason of the war in Afghanistan now we know Americans who started this and who lied who used our American soldiers to kill innocent people and protect the drugs this country was planting this is what the baby boomers did
The war on drugs is one war the Taliban can’t win. They probably sell it to America.
Now they will switch to mining rare earth minerals. Many Republican politicians and their billionaire owners are very interested in this.
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