Afghanistan’s return to the Taliban brought huge profits into the pockets of drug traffickers. After the US withdrew from the country in the summer of 2021, the production of hashish, the raw material for heroin, increased almost a third. In April last year, the price of opium tripled when the Taliban government declared war on opium cultivation. Today, with the ban imposed through land seizures and arrests, heroin smuggling is doomed to crisis. With unpredictable side effects.
synthetic alternatives
Experts fear that stopping the cultivation of Afghan opium, the source of almost all heroin consumed in Europe, could push drug addicts to buy synthetic substances and painkillers. This is the case for fentanyl, a synthetic opioid prescribed for chronic pain or used as an anesthetic before surgery. Its first use as a narcotic, as with other synthetic opioids, dates back to 2000, when the then-Taliban government reduced production of ‘natural’ heroin during the previous opium war. With the outbreak of war in Afghanistan in 2001, opium has re-circulated in large quantities to this day.
risks of ban
“If the Taliban ban results in a dramatic reduction in heroin made from opium poppy, this could create the possibility of more synthetic opioids entering circulation,” said Paul Griffiths, scientific director of the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction. “It seems strange to say this, but the high heroin availability right now is probably a protective factor against the use of synthetic substances,” added Griffiths. politics. Reference is made to the enormous danger of these substances, which are 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine derived from opium.
emergency in the United States
“From the early 2000s, we had a problem with fentanyl in the Baltics, especially in Estonia, where the substance is responsible for quite high levels of drug-related deaths and is a challenging long-term problem,” the expert said. he warned. A recurring crisis in exorbitant numbers also exists in the United States, where fentanyl is now identified as a “main factor in overdose deaths.” More than 106,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021, including more than 1,100 young people. According to health officials, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids are primarily responsible for a more than sevenfold increase in overdose deaths from 2015 to 2021. Only in 2022, cnn, Drug Enforcement Administration More than 50 million counterfeit pills and more than 45 tons of fentanyl were seized.
Risks in the EU
In Europe, “deaths associated with fentanyl and its analogues are rarely reported and may be underestimated in some countries,” he said. highlighted European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction. For now, the problem appears to be limited to some European countries, such as the Netherlands, Latvia, Sweden and Finland, where “overdose deaths are mostly linked to opioid consumption,” according to EU experts. But due to the foreseeable shortage of heroin in illicit drug markets, authorities in all European countries will have to watch out for the circulation of synthetic alternatives that are potentially more harmful than natural ones.
Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
