The ruling Taliban, which harbors Osama Bin Laden and his al Qaeda operatives, has a unique connection to the drug trade. Despite the Koran’s strictures against intoxicants, the Taliban until recently encouraged opium cultivation to help finance its war against the Northern Alliance. Under the Taliban, opium production in Afghanistan tripled, reaching an estimated 3,600 tons in 2000. According to the United Nations Drug Control Program, the opium crop generated about $100 million in 2000. The Taliban, which taxes opium farmers, took about $10 million. The Northern Alliance, which controls about 10 percent of the countryside, also benefits from opium production, using drug profits to buy weapons and military equipment.

In the fall of 2000, the Taliban surprised the international community by announcing that opium cultivation would henceforth be entirely prohibited. Citing religious reasons for the ban, the Taliban brutally enforced the edict. A severe, prolonged drought, the worst in fifty years, also suppressed opium cultivation. The resulting declines were dramatic: the Afghan crop dropped more than 80 percent in one year, according to United Nations aerial and ground surveys. After the cut in production, wholesale prices for a kilo of opium in Afghanistan jumped from $30 to $600. This greatly increased the value of large opium stockpiles of bumper crops collected in earlier years and hidden in remote caves in Taliban territory.

Last spring, the Taliban won international praise for its substantial eradication of opium production. Afghanistan also received $43 million in United States drug control funds for its efforts. However, events since September 11 suggest that the Taliban’s motives in cutting the opium crop were driven more by economic considerations than by religious concerns. The value of the stockpiles jumped twenty-fold, providing critically needed hard currency for the Taliban. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld singled out the opium stockpiles as a major target, although in reality, the widely dispersed stockpiles are difficult to locate, particularly from the air. Since September 11, drug traffic from Afghanistan has risen sharply. Many impoverished Afghans who saved opium from previous crops are cashing it in to get across the border into Pakistan. The heroin market in Great Britain and Europe, which is supplied largely by Afghan opium, has seen prices drop precipitously. Many experts fear that the availability of this very cheap, high purity heroin will increase drug use as well as overdose incidents.

Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has also lifted the ban on poppy cultivation, which he describes as retaliation on Western nations for U.S. bombing. Despite the continued drought, the United Nations predict that Afghanistan, in the absence of the opium eradication edict, will again emerge as the world’s largest producer. For the Taliban opium is the only resource that can produce hard currency for its operations.

What does this mean for drug abuse in the United States? The terrorist attacks and the continuing threat of future attacks have generated unprecedented levels of stress across the country. Recently reported follow-up studies of post-traumatic stress in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995 suggest that increased drug abuse may be one of many long-term impacts of the September 11 events. The need for treatment, already in short supply, will be even more pressing in the coming months.

Afghan heroin itself does not present an immediate threat to the United States. Unlike Europe, the American heroin market is supplied almost entirely by sources in our own hemisphere: Colombia produces about 70 percent of the heroin consumed in the United States and Mexico accounts for another 20 percent. The remaining 10 percent comes from Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Burma. Even if Afghan opium production surpassed its previous record levels, it could not compete with the current supply from America’s neighbors. Although the U.S. has invested more than $30 billion in international drug control efforts since 1981, heroin in this country is much cheaper and purer than ever before. Supply control strategies, which have dominated U.S. drug policy for decades, have failed to reduce either drug availability or drug abuse in this country. Any lasting impact on America’s drug problems will come from reducing demand through education, prevention, and treatment.

Mathea Falco, an attorney, is president of Drug Strategies. She served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotic Matters from 1977-1981.