The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) just came out with their latest survey of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, and you’ll never guess what it says. . . .
. . . Oh wait, you totally will. It turns out the Taliban’s ban on poppy cultivation has been remarkably successful!
Specifically, the UNODC is estimating the total area in Afghanistan under opium poppy cultivation to be 10,200 hectares, down 20% from last year’s total of 12,800 hectares. While the new total may still sound like a lot, it’s a mere fraction of the 232,000 hectares that were estimated to be cultivated in the year before the US military’s spectacular pullout from the country in 2021.
In other words, the Taliban have somehow or other succeeded in doing what NATO was unable to do in two decades of de facto occupation: decimate Afghanistan’s share of the global heroin trade.
So, what’s happening here? What does this tell us about the true nature of the global drug trade? And what does all this have to do with the United States’ coming (real) war on Venezuela’s (fake) fentanyl trade? Let’s find out.