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illegal poppy industry in 2025 is primarily concentrated in 

Afghanistan and Myanmar, the world’s leading sources of illicit opium. In Afghanistan, cultivation has significantly fallen due to a strict ban, while in Myanmar, it has surged amid ongoing conflict. 

Regional Trends

• Afghanistan: The Taliban’s 2022 ban on narcotics has dramatically reduced poppy cultivation across most of the country, with a further 20% decline reported in 2025. This has led to a major shift in the global opium market, with Myanmar becoming the top producer. However, pockets of cultivation persist in northeastern provinces like Badakhshan and Takhar due to economic hardship and high opium prices, which have increased tenfold since the ban. The long-term consequences for rural livelihoods remain a concern without sustainable alternatives.
• Myanmar: Production has soared, making Myanmar the world’s leading producer of illicitly sourced opium in 2024, a trend that continues into 2025. Cultivation is concentrated in war-torn regions like Shan State, where displaced civilians and a lack of other options drive farmers to grow poppies to survive.
• India: Security forces in states like Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh have intensified operations in 2025 to destroy hundreds of acres of illegal poppy cultivation, facing challenges including ethnic tensions and resistance from armed groups.
• Americas: Colombia and Mexico remain significant sources of illegal opium production. Discussions continue regarding potential legal pathways for medical use to address the public health crises in the US and Canada, though significant hurdles remain. In the US, cultivating poppies and importing poppy pods are strictly illegal, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection continuing to seize shipments at the border. 

Key Dynamics

• Market Shift: The decline in Afghan production has shifted regional trafficking patterns and led to a rise in opium prices, which benefits high-level organized crime groups.
• Rise of Synthetics: As agricultural-based opiate production becomes more volatile, the production and trafficking of synthetic drugs, particularly methamphetamine, has increased significantly since 2021, emerging as a new business model for criminal organizations due to its ease of production and difficulty in detection.
• Enforcement: Governments and international bodies like the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) are working to combat illegal cultivation and trafficking. The US and China launched a working group in 2024 to address the flow of precursor chemicals used in synthetic drug production. 

Afghanistan: Opium prices approach historic peaks, crime syndicates benefit – UN News

Mar 11, 2025 — Prices for opium in Afghanistan have increased tenfold since the de facto authorities imposed a drug ban in 2022 following their takeover in Kabul, …

UN News

In 2025, the illegal poppy industry is primarily centered in Myanmar and specific regions of Afghanistan, while there are also ongoing eradication efforts in parts of India, such as Manipur. The global market is also seeing a shift towards synthetic drugs, like methamphetamine. 

Global Overview of the Illegal Poppy Industry in 2025

• Afghanistan Following a strict ban imposed by the Taliban in April 2022, overall opium cultivation has fallen dramatically from previous years, with a 20% decline recorded in 2025. However, some regional variation persists, with cultivation concentrated in the northeastern province of Badakhshan. The price of opium has increased significantly since the ban, benefiting high-level traffickers, while many farmers face economic hardship and a lack of viable alternative livelihoods. The decline in opium production has led to a drop in opiate seizures, but the market appears to be shifting towards synthetic drugs.
• Myanmar Amid the country’s ongoing civil war, opium cultivation and methamphetamine production have surged, making Myanmar the world’s leading producer of illicitly sourced opium after the significant drop in Afghanistan. Displaced residents often turn to poppy farming as a means of survival and livelihood.
• India Security forces in the Manipur state have intensified operations to destroy hundreds of acres of illegal poppy cultivation throughout 2025. These anti-narcotics drives have, in some instances, faced public opposition and exposed links between narcotics and local conflicts.
• Other Regions In the United States, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers have made multiple seizures of illegal opium poppy pods being shipped into the country in 2025, primarily from countries like Spain. Cultivating opium poppies in the US is illegal. 
• 
  The drastic reduction in opium cultivation in 
  Afghanistan
   following the 2022 ban has led to severe socio-economic consequences for farmers, including widespread poverty, food insecurity, and economic desperation. 
  
  Economic Hardship and Poverty
  Massive Income Loss Farmers’ annual income from opium sales plunged from approximately $1.4 billion in 2022 to just $134 million in 2025. The average income from opium sales fell by 48% between 2024 and 2025 alone. This has resulted in the loss of billions of dollars in economic activity within the rural economy.
  Loss of Livelihoods The ban has affected the livelihoods of an estimated seven million people who relied on the opium industry for employment, including small farmers, sharecroppers, and wage laborers.
  Insufficient Alternatives Many farmers switched to low-value, legal crops like wheat, which cannot generate sufficient income to meet basic household needs. This situation is compounded by a lack of viable, sustainable alternative livelihood options and a weak overall economy with few other job opportunities.
  Impact on Women Farm work was a primary source of employment for women in rural areas. With limited alternative work opportunities under the current regime, women have been particularly hard hit by the economic shock. 
  
  Humanitarian and Social Crises
  Food Insecurity The economic shock has increased the risk of hunger and malnutrition for already vulnerable rural communities. Many families struggle to purchase enough food, leading to severe food insecurity.
  Increased Debt The loss of income has forced many poor farmers into deeper cycles of debt.
  Harmful Coping Mechanisms Households have resorted to desperate coping strategies, such as selling off valuable livestock and other assets, eschewing necessary medical care, and, in extreme cases, prematurely marrying off daughters to pay debts.
  Migration Pressures The deepening poverty and lack of opportunities are likely to spur increased outmigration, with many people trying to leave Afghanistan for neighboring countries, Turkey, and Europe in search of work and remittances. The return of millions of migrants from neighboring countries has intensified the competition for scarce jobs and resources.
  Political Instability The worsening rural poverty and dissatisfaction among landowners could increase political tensions and potentially lead to local resistance against the ban. 
  
  Environmental Challenges
  Drought and Barren Land Worsening climate conditions, including severe drought and low rainfall, have compounded the problem, leaving over 40% of agricultural land uncultivated in some areas and further damaging farmers’ livelihoods. 
• 
  The economic shock from the opium ban is enormous: Not including adverse effects on downstream processing, trade, transport and exports, Afghanistan’s farm-level rural economy has lost more than $1 billion per year worth of economic activity as calculated by Mansfield, including as much as hundreds of millions of dollars that had accrued to poorer wage laborers and sharecroppers. These people and their families, already at the margin of subsistence and lacking other job opportunities in Afghanistan’s very weak economy, will be at even greater risk of hunger, malnutrition and associated health problems.
  This economic shock comes on top of a significant reduction of humanitarian aid in store for this year — likely at least a $1 billion reduction compared to the $3 billion of humanitarian aid delivered in 2022. Thus Afghanistan’s mostly poor, deprived population will be doubly squeezed.
  Moreover, replacing poppy with wheat (as has been happening during the current opium ban) is economically unviable for Afghanistan’s rural sector as a whole and especially for households owning limited or no land. Most Afghans don’t achieve food security by growing their own food. Rather, people make ends meet by growing cash crops or producing other agricultural products (e.g., livestock and dairy), which can be sold to provide resources to purchase food needs, or by working other jobs. Wheat is a low-value crop and a poor substitute for opium, though it does serve as a temporary recourse for people who may expect to return to opium poppy later, in particular for landowners whose fields are ample enough to serve their own family’s food needs. Fruits and other tree crops would be more viable substitutes for opium poppy over the long run but require significant time and investments.
  Another, related outcome is that more people will try to leave Afghanistan, going to nearby countries and then onward to Turkey and Europe. As Mansfield documents, the cost of people smuggling is low compared to the potential rewards of being employed in and sending remittances from Europe. Moreover, other alternatives for the poor that were available before August 2021 (like finding work in cities, other rural on-farm and non-farm activities, or the Afghan National Army) are now limited to nonexistent.
  Delayed and Longer-term Impacts
  Additional damage from the opium ban will materialize with a delay, over the coming months and years.
  An important buffer for better-off rural households is the inventories of opium they have built up from the 2022 bumper crop. Landowning households able to hold on to their opium inventories have benefited from capital gains as the price rose, and can sell off some of them to offset the loss of this year’s crop, while growing wheat and other crops to feed their families. (It should be noted that the Taliban as a movement and now as a governing regime do not hold sizable inventories of opium.)
  This buffer will erode over time. Suffering will increase among middling farm households as they exhaust what inventories they have of opium and are forced into more harmful coping mechanisms, as poorer households have already done in response to broader economic privation: selling livestock and other remaining assets, eschewing medical care and medicines, eating less and lower-quality food, sending family members out of the country, or even marrying off daughters prematurely.
  The impact of the opium ban on drug supplies and prices in other countries, and ultimately in Europe, will not be immediate. After the 2000 Taliban ban, it took about 18 months to two years for the impacts to play out in Europe, as Mansfield notes, in the form of effective price increases through adulteration of the purity of heroin on markets, which exacerbated risks to problem drug users from overdoses. Such impacts probably would become significant this time around if the opium ban is effectively implemented for a second year.
  What Happens Next?
  The big question now is whether or not the poppy ban will be maintained for a second year.
  Historically, there have been examples of successful opium bans in Afghanistan, both nationally (2000-2001) and regionally (Nangarhar province for a number of years, significant reductions in Helmand on two occasions). But maintaining these bans has invariably proved difficult. It is unclear what the Taliban would have done during the late 2001 planting season, after the 2000 ban weakened them politically in key rural areas and arguably contributed at least in part to their surprisingly rapid defeat by international forces after 9/11. There were already signs of increasing resistance against the ban, which suggest that it could not have been fully maintained even if the Taliban had remained in power. And the provincial-level bans during the Islamic Republic period became increasingly hard to sustain over time as privation and resistance against them grew.
  So, implementation of the ban for a second year can be expected to face increasing resistance. As more influential middle-sized and larger landowners in the south and southwest deplete their opium inventories they are unlikely to be as accepting as they were in the first year and could even lobby against continuation of the ban. As a core Taliban constituency, their voices will be heard, though to what effect remains to be seen. And in the east and northeast, where landholdings are small and resistance already significant, it may well snowball if the ban is enforced for a second year.  
  The political blowback within the Taliban from the ban, limited and manageable so far, thus may intensify if the ban continues to be seriously implemented into 2024. In addition to influential landowners, Taliban figures associated with the drug industry may increasingly weigh in or actively try to subvert the ban, at least locally.
  However, the serious, sustained effort that went into implementing the opium ban in its first year, and the political and personal capital Emir Haibatullah Akhundzada has invested in this effort, suggest that it will continue and there won’t be an outright reversal. And the economic shock and human suffering will continue and worsen as long is the ban is implemented.
  International Response?
  There will probably be a counter narcotics-driven, knee-jerk response that the effectively implemented Taliban opium ban is a good thing. However, history amply demonstrates that banning opium in Afghanistan by itself is not sustainable, nor does it address the drug problem in Europe and elsewhere. And it won’t stop rampant drug use within Afghanistan. Supply-side measures will not work if not backed up with sensible development interventions to help make them sustainable. This is especially true given the weak Afghan economy and lack of ample non-drug income earning opportunities. And simply put, these measures will not reduce drug consumption unless accompanied by effective demand reduction measures.
  The Taliban opium ban may provide a well-grounded justification for more humanitarian assistance. As with that aid as a whole, however, this would just be a band-aid to provide temporary relief unless and until the opium ban is rescinded or undercut. Moreover, any bump to humanitarian aid that may materialize will at best maintain it closer to the existing level, not result in an increase from last year.
  Some forms of basic needs rural development aidcould be helpful — agricultural support, small-scale rural infrastructure, income generation, small water projects, investments in agro-processing and marketing, and the like. It would make sense to orient any basic needs assistance that becomes available for Afghanistan in these directions, while recognizing that the modest amounts of money involved will at best have a marginal impact. Custom-made, standalone “alternative livelihoods” projects should be avoided, especially if designed, overseen or implemented by counter-narcotics agencies, which lack development expertise. It is broader rural development that will over time make a difference, as part of a healthy, growing economy that generates licit jobs and livelihoods opportunities.
  And finally, the international response must acknowledge not only the overall damage that the opium ban is causing for the Afghan economy, but also the likely upsurge in outmigration that will result. Trying to block people flows at the Afghan border will work only imperfectly, and to the extent it is successful will worsen privation and hunger within the country.
  Overall, while understanding the extraordinary success of the Taliban’s opium ban and what it tells us about the Taliban’s strength and effectiveness as a governing regime, the international response must be clear-eyed about the very real costs the ban imposes both on Afghanistan and the world, on top of the other very serious economic and social problems the country faces.