ISLAMABAD (AP) 鈥 Afghanistan is the world鈥檚 fastest-growing maker of methamphetamine, a report from the United Nations drug agency said Sunday. The country is also a major opium producer and heroin source, even though the Taliban declared a war on narcotics after they returned to power in August 2021.
The United Nations鈥 Office on Drugs and Crimes, which published the report, said meth in Afghanistan is mostly made from legally available substances or extracted from the ephedra plant, which grows in the wild.
The report called Afghanistan鈥檚 meth manufacturing a growing threat to national and regional health and security because it could disrupt the synthetic drug market and fuel addiction. It said seizures of meth suspected to have come from Afghanistan have been reported from the European Union and east Africa.
Annual meth seizure totals from inside the country rose from less than 100 kilograms (220 pounds) in 2019 to nearly 2,700 kilograms (6,000 pounds) in 2021, suggesting increased production, the report said. But it couldn't give a value for the country's meth supply, the quantities being produced, nor its domestic usage, because it doesn't have the data.
Angela Me, the chief of the UNODC鈥檚 Research and Trend Analysis Branch, told The Associated Press that making meth, especially in Afghanistan, had several advantages over heroin or cocaine production.
鈥淵ou don鈥檛 need to wait for something to grow," said Me. "You don't need land. You just need the cooks and the know-how. Meth labs are mobile, they鈥檙e hidden. Afghanistan also has the ephedra plant, which is not found in the and Mexico. It鈥檚 legal in Afghanistan and it grows everywhere. But you need a lot of it.鈥
Me said it was too early to assess what impact the has had on meth supplies.
A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, Abdul Mateen Qani, told the AP that the Taliban-run government has prohibited the cultivation, production, sale and use of all intoxicants and narcotics in Afghanistan.
He said authorities have destroyed 644 factories and around 12,000 acres of land where prohibited narcotics were cultivated, processed or produced. There have been more than 5,000 raids in which 6,000 people have been arrested.
鈥淲e cannot claim 100% that it is finished because people can still do these activities in secret. It is not possible to bring it to zero in such a short time," said Qani. "But we have a four-year strategic plan that narcotics in general and meth in particular will be finished.鈥
A said that opium cultivation since the Taliban takeover increased by 32% over the previous year, and that opium prices rose following authorities' announcement of a cultivation ban in April 2022. Farmers' income from opium sales tripled from $425 million in 2021 to $1.4 billion in 2022.
The 2022 report also said that the illicit drug market thrived as , making people open to illegal cultivation and trafficking for their survival.
Afghans are dealing with drought, severe economic hardship and the continued consequences of decades of war and .
The downturn, along with the halt of international financing that propped up the economy of the former Western-backed government, is driving people into and .
An Afghan health official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said around 20,000 people are in hospitals for drug addiction, mostly to crystal meth. Of these patients, 350 are women. He said children are also being treated, but did not give the number nor their ages.
