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Europe faces growing threat from synthetic opioids and new drugs, report warns

Highly potent synthetic opioids are spreading through Europe's fast-changing drug market, linked to hundreds of deaths as traffickers shift to smaller ports and new smuggling methods, the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA) has warned.


Issued on: 10/06/2026 -  RFI

File photo showing counterfeit pills containing fentanyl. Synthetic opioids are emerging as a growing concern in Europe's illicit drug market, according to the European Union Drugs Agency. AP - Uncredited

The Lisbon-based agency's annual report, published on Tuesday, found that drugs are becoming more available, more diverse and more potent across Europe, while organised crime groups are adapting their trafficking networks to evade detection.

Although Europe continues to record far fewer fatal overdoses than North America, the report pointed to growing risks from synthetic opioids and a steady flow of new substances entering the market.

At least 50 new psychoactive substances were identified for the first time in Europe in 2025, based on data from the EU's 27 member states, Norway and Turkey.

"Drug markets are evolving at speed, with the variety of substances on Europe's streets becoming ever more unpredictable," said EUDA executive director Lorraine Nolan.


"This raises the risk of people taking high-potency drugs, often without knowing it."

Mounting deaths

Particular concern centred on nitazenes, a group of powerful synthetic opioids found in counterfeit benzodiazepines and street drugs including cocaine, heroin and ketamine.

Nitazenes were linked to 195 deaths in England and Wales in 2024, nearly four times the previous year's figure. In Bulgaria, fentanyl was associated with more than 100 deaths between 2024 and 2025, with fatalities spreading beyond the capital, Sofia.

The EUDA estimated that at least 7,600 people died from overdoses in the European Union in 2024, equal to 25 deaths per million people aged 15 to 64. Most cases involved multiple substances.

Opioids, often taken in combination with other drugs, remained the leading cause of drug-induced deaths in Europe.

The report said illicit drugs are now widely available across the continent, with new cannabis products continuing to appear and a growing range of opioids and stimulants being sold.

New routes

Drug trafficking networks are increasingly using smaller, less-scrutinised ports after intensified policing operations at major European gateways, the report said.

The volume of cocaine seized in Europe fell by more than 20 percent from 419 tonnes in 2023. At the same time, the number of seizures rose to 97,000 from 95,000 a year earlier, suggesting traffickers may be switching to smaller and more fragmented shipments.

New trafficking methods, including drones and speedboats, are also complicating enforcement efforts.

Cannabis remained the most widely used drug in Europe, with juste under 25 million adults aged 15 to 64 reporting use in the previous year. It accounted for 68 percent of around one million drug seizures in 2024.

Cocaine was the second most commonly used drug, with 4.3 million adults reporting use.

Drug-related intimidation and violence remain a concern, the report said, including the exploitation and recruitment of vulnerable young people by criminal groups.

(with newswires)

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Spanish Intercept Ship “Completely Stuffed” with Record Cocaine Load

The ship seen arriving in Gran Canaria was reportedly "stuffed" with bales of cocaine (IGC NACIONAL)

Published May 5, 2026 1:32 PM by The Maritime Executive

Details are starting to come out on what will likely be Spain’s largest ever drug seizure, possibly three to four times the prior record. Guardia Civil intercepted a general cargo ship last week, which reports said was “completely stuffed,” and when the final tally is done, the expectation is that the load was between 30 and 45 tonnes.

Guardia Civil has declined to release details at this stage, saying the investigation is ongoing and that it is working under a court order. Spain’s Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, however, told reporters in Madrid the seizure would be one of the largest not only nationally but internationally.

The ship named Arconian (4,347 dwt) was observed making its way north along the African coast. It departed Freetown, Sierra Leone, on April 22. The ship, which is 91 meters (299 feet) in length, is registered in Comoros and listed as owned by a company in Sierra Leone. It was reporting a destination of Benghazi, Libya, but according to the reports, the authorities believe that may have been false information.

Authorities speaking to the French news agency AFP said it was likely the ship was going to be met by multiple small boats to offload portions of the drugs. Due to the amount onboard, they believe many small boats and multiple ports would have been involved in the operation. The report points out that the authorities said offloading that amount of cargo in any one port was likely to raise suspicion. Also, Libya would have been a transshipment stop, as the final destination was surely Europe.

 

Reports said the ship was stuffed with the bales of cocaine (AUGC Guardia Civil)

 

The vessel was intercepted on May 1 off the coast of Western Sahara. The ship was directed to the naval base at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where it arrived Sunday evening.

There were 23 crewmembers aboard who have all been placed in detention. The media reports are that they were from the Philippines, the Netherlands, and Angola.

The police were beginning a comprehensive search of the vessel on Monday and starting to offload the bales of cocaine. Pictures are also showing a cache of weapons found on the ship.  The case remains under a sealed court order from Spain’s Audiencia Nacional.

Spanish authorities had reported a seizure of 13 tonnes of cocaine found in containers at the Port of Algeciras in October 2024. This year, in January, they also reported a seizure at sea of 10 tonnes, which was said to have been the largest seizure from a ship at sea.

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Cocaine flowing through West Africa 'fuelling corruption and crack use'

An increase in cocaine trafficking through West Africa is fuelling corruption in some countries, reaching the highest levels of government, a report published this week warns. At least 30 percent of cocaine bound for Europe now passes through the region, while growing volumes of the drug are also being consumed locally, including in the form of crack.


Issued on: 11/03/2026 - RFI

People gather around a speedboat believed to be used by drug traffickers as it unloads cargo at a quay in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. West Africa has become a major transit route for cocaine bound for Europe. A

SSOCIATED PRESS - Rebecca Blackwell

The analysis comes from a report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC), a Geneva-based NGO that studies crime networks.

Rising cocaine production in Latin America and growing demand in Europe have pushed more shipments through West Africa in recent years.

Seizures have climbed steadily since 2019, reaching around 30 tonnes in 2025, according to data compiled by the organisation.

Authorities have also recorded record interceptions, including up to 10 tonnes seized on a single boat, something the report says did not occur before 2019.

Corruption along the route

Traffickers are increasingly using West Africa as a route to Europe because it is considered less risky than more direct paths.

Corruption among intermediaries can reduce the chances that shipments will be seized along the way.

“In some countries these are political actors, sometimes at the highest levels of the state. In others they are officials working at ports or airports,” report author Lucia Bird said.

“The profits generated by the cocaine trade are reaching record levels, and the resources available to fuel corruption have also increased.”

The cocaine market has become “an attractive source of income for civil servants and political elites” in West Africa the report said, noting that the involvement of some officials in trafficking is increasing.

In January 2025, Sierra Leone recalled its ambassador to Guinea after suitcases filled with cocaine were discovered in vehicles belonging to the embassy.

Since 2021, several public scandals have also implicated ministers in Guinea-Bissau in cocaine trafficking.

Spread of crack cocaine

The intensifying cocaine trade is also driving growing consumption in West Africa, with use increasing in several countries including Senegal and crack cocaine becoming more common.

GI-TOC said governments in the region should treat cocaine consumption “as a public health problem and not only as a challenge for the criminal justice system”.

West Africa is also taking on a larger role in the global cocaine trade.

The region “no longer serves only as a corridor to Europe. It is increasingly being used as a platform for storage, repackaging and distribution in global cocaine supply chains,” said Mouhamadou Kane, another author of the report.

Maritime trade plays an important role in this system.

Cocaine can be hidden inside goods exported from the region, including cashews, cocoa, timber and other commercial products.

Existing trade routes linking West Africa with Turkey, the Middle East, India and some Asian markets also offer new opportunities for criminal networks.

These routes allow traffickers to diversify their operations and reach expanding markets beyond Europe, Kane said.

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Cocaine smugglers are plaguing international shipping companies

Cocaine smugglers are plaguing international shipping companies / bne IntelliNews

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By Ben Aris in Berlin December 12, 2025

Cool Carriers, the world’s largest  operator of specialised refrigerated cargo vessels, known as reefers, has rejected allegations broadcast by Danish TV2 linking the group to a cocaine-smuggling scheme off Denmark’s coast, insisting it had no operational control over the ships or the crew involved, the company told bne IntelliNews on December 8.

The scandal erupted after Danish broadcaster TV2 reported on a police investigation into drug drops carried out by armed gangs using fast boats. According to the investigation, gang members recovered bags of cocaine dumped at sea by passing container vessels. One of the gangsters, 26-year-old Albanian Mustafa Xhaferas, confessed and received a 15-year prison sentence.

In his testimony, Xhaferas claimed the consignments were thrown overboard from two ships — Cool Eagle and Cool Explorer — transporting bananas from Ecuador to St Petersburg. TV2 suggested the vessels were managed by Cool Carriers.

The company said the report was “categorically false.” Cool Carriers is the commercial operator of the two ships, but not the owner and has nothing to do with the day to day operations of the ships, which it leases, but does not run them. Operational control, including hiring and managing the crew, rests entirely with the third-party owners, decisions that Cool Carriers plays no part in making.

“This means we are twice removed from the crew,” Glenn Selling, chief operating officer at Cool Carriers AB based in Sweden said speaking to bne IntelliNews. “The crew are employed by agencies hired by the owners. We have nothing to do with those decisions. That is the owner’s responsibility, and the owner makes all those decisions. It's their responsibility. When the investigation was launched, the police didn’t even bother to interview us in connection with the case. We found out about it from the media.”

Selling stressed that the narcotics trade has become a systemic threat to global shipping and is infecting the whole industry. “It’s a problem on an industrial scale,” he told bne IntelliNews. “No one company can do anything against this on its own. We don’t have guns on board our ships. We can’t check everything. We need the help of the authorities. This is a problem of a scale that countries have to tackle. We of course do what we can.”

The group operates more than 50 refrigerated vessels, transporting fruit and other perishables. Its largest offices are in Cyprus and Sweden, with additional operations in Chile, South Africa and the US. It has no legal entities and no representation in Russia.

Cool Eagle and Cool Explorer are owned by third-party investors and only leased by Cool Carriers. As a commercial operator, the company books cargoes, arranges port handling, and manages commercial costs. It does not select or supervise crews, nor does it control onboard activity during voyages. “This is the job of the management company or the owner,” Selling said.

Cool Carriers has introduced multiple safeguards against smuggling, including mandatory hull inspections by divers, full pre-departure checks and strict rules preventing crew from disembarking in high-risk ports – especially in South America. “We welcome customs inspections at any time. We work closely with the authorities,” Selling said. But he added that responsibility for security ultimately lies with port authorities and local customs services.

Drug business exploding

On March 15 this year, the French Navy intercepted more than 6,386 kilograms of cocaine, valued at €371mn ($400mn), during a maritime operation off the Gulf of Guinea.

The bust was conducted in coordination with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency (NCA), and the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre–Narcotics (MAOC-N) based in Portugal.

The seizure is the latest in a series of large-scale cocaine interceptions as drug trafficking explodes on the back of rising supply and demand, much of it arriving in its final markets by sea, Maritime Crimes reported in July.

The latest seizures follow on from a record-breaking seizure of 24.5 tonnes of cocaine at the port of Hamburg in June 2024. That haul surpassed the previous record set six years earlier in July 2019, when US authorities intercepted 20 tonnes of cocaine aboard the MSC Gayane, a Liberian-flagged container ship docked in Philadelphia, operated by the world’s largest container shipping company. The Gayane seizure remains one of the largest ever recorded, with an estimated market value exceeding $1bn.

In total, authorities worldwide seized a stunning 1,838 tonnes of illicit substances in 2024, with 281 tonnes of that total being cocaine.

Cultivation of coca leaves is expanding with the bulk of the world’s production concentrated in a handful of counties in the northern parts of Latin America.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has reported that global coca production is nearing 2,700 tonnes, with approximately 355,000 hectares under coca cultivation. Colombia accounts for 230,000 hectares—65% of the global total—followed by Peru with 95,000 hectares (27%) and Bolivia with 30,000 hectares (8%). Smaller production areas remain in Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico.

Ecuador has emerged as a growing problem. Once a peaceful travel destination, it has seen escalating violence and political instability, creating fertile ground for cartels. Peru is similarly plagued as cities such as Lima, Trujillo and Arequipa have been wracked by extortion, contract killings and gang-related violence this year. This environment creates ideal conditions for cartels to operate. Workers and officials are routinely bribed to place narcotics on board vessels. “Gangs are relentless,” Selling said. A shipment of 1,000kg of cocaine can be worth more than $50mn on the streets of London.

“Record seizures indicate both the scale of trafficking and the increased efforts by international law enforcement,” the UNODC said in its latest report.

Maritime drug running has come into especially sharp focus recently as the Trump administration launches a series of military strikes on boats it claims are smuggling drugs from the north coast of Venezuela to the US, highlighting the widespread use of shipping to move large scale quantities of illicit substances.

Seas route remains the cartels’ preferred means of transport and stashing drugs in containers is the favourite ruse, in what has been dubbed a “rip-on/rip-off” system, according to a report in Maritime Crimes on the mushrooming illicit trade.

But another method, the “drop-off”, has grown in popularity as the ongoing game of cat and mouse between the drug enforcement agencies and the cartels plays out. Basically, traffickers throw packets of drugs over the side of the ship as it approaches port. It is either picked up from the seabed by divers later or the packets float and are retrieved using geolocation devices.

Finally, in a world of rapidly developing drone technology, the cartels also have started using self-propelled semi-submersibles (SPSS) to transport several tonnes of cocaine. The US Coast Guard is already regularly intercepting SPSS off the coasts of Texas, Florida and California, Maritime Crimes reports.

Cartels at sea

Sea routes remain the cartels’ preferred means of transport and containers are a convenient way to stash large amounts of drugs, making the largest multinational container ships especially vulnerable.

Cool Carriers has suffered from its first major narcotics incidents. But it has become a regular problem the world's biggest shipping companies are desperately working to curb.

Maersk and MSC, the world’s two largest cargo carriers, have repeatedly been targeted. Mexican authorities seized 102.5kg of cocaine from the Svendborg Maersk in 2020. Dutch prosecutors uncovered eight tonnes of cocaine in a Maersk refrigerated container in Rotterdam in 2023, the largest single seizure in the port’s history. Employees were arrested as part of the investigation.

Bloomberg reported in 2022 that MSC had been “infiltrated” by cocaine cartels, a claim the company strongly denied, saying smugglers used “groundbreaking methods” that “could not have been foreseen or predicted by any honest shipping company.” MSC said its staff were not mandated or equipped to confront organised crime that has hundreds of millions of dollars at its disposal in its subterfuges.

Multiple crew members from the MSC Gayane were later convicted in the US for participating in an operation that saw boats pulled alongside the vessel as drugs were hoisted aboard and hidden in containers.

Cool Carriers said its experience must be understood against this backdrop. Drug trafficking “acts as a parasite on the shipping industry,” Selling said, adding the group remains committed to full cooperation with authorities worldwide.

“This is not a problem any operator can solve alone,” he said. “But we will continue to do everything in our power to ensure our vessels remain safe and secure.”

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Colombia’s Petro says drug consumption "is not criminal"

Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s latest remarks continue his controversial pattern of advocating for a permissive drug policy. / agencia brasil

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By Cynthia Michelle Aranguren Hernández December 12, 2025

Colombian President Gustavo Petro Urrego has said that drug consumption should not be treated as a crime, arguing that users are shaped by social and emotional factors rather than criminal intent, in remarks delivered at the Police Community of the Americas (Ameripol) meeting on December 10, Infobae reported.

Petro stated the criminalisation of drug users reflects “social and power constructions” rather than scientific criteria, adding that Colombia’s decades of confronting cocaine trafficking demonstrated the need to address addiction through social and human-centred approaches instead of solely policing.

The president warned that competitive social environments can increase vulnerability to addiction and noted that Colombia’s historic focus has been on cocaine — and, to a lesser degree, marijuana — but that synthetic narcotics have introduced new complexities. Petro pointed out that substances such as fentanyl, responsible for most of the deadly drug overdoses in the US, require no crops and can be produced with industrial technology. Their personalised, small-scale manufacture makes detection harder, he said.

“Crime is not exclusively a police matter… it must be viewed from diverse and multiple perspectives," Petro said. He added that global trends are moving gradually towards decriminalisation and that Colombia “has learned” that penalising consumers is ineffective.

The US-sanctioned leftist leader, whom President Donald Trump has recently branded an "illegal drug dealer," also said Colombia is no longer home to the top leaders of drug-trafficking organisations as the industry has become transnational. He pointed to captured links in Medellín tied to groups from Albania, Croatia, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Mexico, among others. According to Petro, the “ex-Colombian” model has been overtaken by multinational networks composed of varied nationalities and driven by global, not national, dynamics.

Petro’s latest remarks continue his controversial pattern of advocating for a permissive drug policy. During a televised cabinet meeting last February, he claimed cocaine was only illegal "because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whiskey," and suggested global legalisation would allow it to be "sold like wine."

Colombia's cocaine seizures as a proportion of potential production reached 29% in 2024, the second-lowest figure in a decade, despite Petro's assertions of record confiscations, according to analysis by La Silla Vacía based on UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) data. The country is responsible for around 70% of the world's coca production, as per UN data.

The UNODC estimated Colombia produced 3,001 tonnes of cocaine in 2024, representing a 12.6% increase from 2023's 2,664 tonnes, with coca cultivation reaching a record 261,000 hectares, up 3.2% from 253,000 hectares the previous year. 

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New discovery suggests opium use in ancient cultures, from Xerxes to King Tut

Yale University

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New Haven, Conn. — Examination of an ancient alabaster vase in the Yale Peabody Museum’s Babylonian Collection has revealed traces of opiates, providing the clearest evidence to date of broad opium use in ancient Egyptian society, according to a new study by the Yale Ancient Pharmacology Program (YAPP). 

The finding suggests that similar ancient Egyptian alabaster vessels — all made of calcite mined from the same quarries in Egypt — including several exquisite examples discovered in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun — could also contain traces of ancient opiates, said Andrew J. Koh, YAPP’s principal investigator and the study’s lead author. 

“Our findings combined with prior research indicate that opium use was more than accidental or sporadic in ancient Egyptian cultures and surrounding lands and was, to some degree, a fixture of daily life,” said Koh, a research scientist at the Yale Peabody Museum. “We think it’s possible, if not probable, that alabaster jars found in King Tut’s tomb contained opium as part of an ancient tradition of opiate use that we are only now beginning to understand.”

The study, published in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology, is coauthored by Agnete W. Lassen, associate curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection, and Alison M. Crandall, YAPP’s lab manager. 

The alabaster vase is inscribed in four ancient languages — Akkadian, Elamite, Persian, and Egyptian — to Xerxes I, who ruled the Achaemenid Empire from 486 to 465 BCE. Based in Persia, the empire at its height included Egypt as well as Mesopotamia, the Levant, Anatolia, and parts of Eastern Arabia and Central Asia.  

A second inscription on the vase written in Demotic script — a simplified form of ancient Egyptian writing — indicates that it has a capacity of about 1,200 millimeters. (It is 22 centimeters tall.) Intact examples of inscribed ancient Egyptian alabaster vessels are exceptionally rare, likely numbering less than 10 in collections worldwide, the researchers noted. 

The provenances of the intact vessels are generally unknown, the researchers said, but they at least span the reigns of Achaemenid emperors Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes, a period covering 550 to 425 BCE. Yale’s vase has been part of the Babylonian Collection since shortly after the assemblage of about 40,000 ancient artifacts was established at the university in 1911. 

Based at the Peabody Museum, YAPP harnesses ethnography, science, and technology to better understand how people lived thousands of years ago. Its researchers study the organic residues found on or within ancient vessels, providing insight into ancient people’s diets and lifestyles. The program has developed specific methods for analyzing organic residues — which degrade and decompose over time and are susceptible to contamination — found in artifacts in museum collections or those that have been recently excavated. 

“Scholars tend to study and admire ancient vessels for their aesthetic qualities, but our program focuses on how they were used and the organic substances they contained, knowledge that reveals a great deal of information about the daily lives of ancient peoples, included what they ate, the medicines they used, and how they spent their leisure time,” Koh said.  

For the new study, Koh’s interest was initially piqued after observing dark-brown aromatic residues inside the vase. 

YAPP’s analysis of the residues revealed definitive evidence for noscapine, hydrocotarnine, morphine, thebaine, and papaverine — well-known diagnostic biomarkers for opium. 

Researchers say the results echo the discovery of opiate residues in a group of Egyptian alabaster vessels and Cypriot base-ring juglets found in an ordinary tomb, likely a merchant family, in Sedment, Egypt, located south of Cairo, that dates to the New Kingdom, the Egyptian empire that stretched from the 16th to the 11th century BCE.

The two findings, which stretch over a millennium and across socio-economic groups, raise the distinct possibility that opium is present among the large quantity of alabaster vessels found in Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Koh said. 

There are clear signals of opium usage that goes beyond medicinal usage and into the spiritual realm throughout antiquity, stretching from ancient Mesopotamia to Egypt and through the Aegean, he said. During Tutankhamun's lifetime, for example, people in Crete were associated with the so-called “poppy goddess” in clearly ritualistic contexts. The poppy plant is mentioned in multiple ancient texts including the Ebers Papyrus, Hippocrates, Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica, and Galen. 

Egyptologist and archaeologist Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in November 1922 yielded an enormous haul of artifacts, including a vast number of exquisitely preserved Egyptian alabaster vessels that likely represented the finest available during Tutankhamen’s reign, which last from 1,333 to 1,323 BCE. 

In 1933, the analytical chemist Alfred Lucas, a member of Carter’s research team, performed a cursory chemical study of the vessels, many of which contained sticky, dark brown, aromatic organics. At the time, Lucas was unable to chemically identify the organic materials, but he determined that most were not unguents or perfumes. 

“That Lucas questioned whether any of the vessels contained perfumes or unguents at all and did not identify the remaining vessel contents as primarily aromatic in nature is significant given that the prevailing conventions at the time would have pressured him to do so,” Koh said.

No further analysis of the organic materials has been conducted since Lucas’ early attempt. The vessels — along with most other artifacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb — are housed at the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, Egypt.

After his historic discovery, Carter had noted an ancient looting incident that targeted the contents of the alabaster vessels, the researchers said. Finger marks found inside the vessels suggested that the looters had attempted to meticulously scrape out their contents to the dregs. Many of the looted vessels contained that same dark-brown, aromatic substances that Lucas concluded were not perfumes, the researchers note. A few of the vessels were not looted and remain filled with their original contents. 

Those contents, whatever they were, were considered important enough to accompany Tutankhamen into the afterlife and to inspire grave robbers to risk their lives in an attempted theft, Koh said. 

It is unlikely, he added, that ancient people would have assigned such value to the standard unguents and perfumes of the day. 

“We now have found opiate chemical signatures that Egyptian alabaster vessels attached to elite societies in Mesopotamia and embedded in more ordinary cultural circumstances within ancient Egypt,” Koh said. “It’s possible these vessels were easily recognizable cultural markers for opium use in ancient times, just as hookahs today are attached to shisha tobacco consumption. Analyzing the contents of the jars from King Tut’s tomb would further clarify the role of opium in these ancient societies.”

---

DOI

10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.13.3.0317 

Article Title

The Pharmacopeia of Ancient Egyptian Alabaster Vessels: A Transdisciplinary Approach with Legacy Artifacts

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Opium output down in Afghanistan as synthetic drug trade increases: UN

/ Tim Cooper - Unsplash

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By bno - Taipei Office November 6, 2025

Afghanistan’s opium cultivation fell sharply this year, yet the United Nations has warned that the country’s illicit economy is increasingly shifting towards synthetic drugs, The Khaama Press News Agency, reports.

According to a report released on November 6 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium poppy cultivation declined by 20% in 2025 compared with the previous year, reflecting the continuing impact of the Taliban’s nationwide ban. The total area under cultivation fell to around 10,200 hectares, down from 12,800 hectares in 2024 and a fraction of the 232,000 hectares recorded in 2022 before the prohibition came into effect the report added.

Production fell even faster, dropping by nearly a third to an estimated 296 tonnes. The downturn has had a pronounced effect on farmers’ incomes, which plunged from about $260mn to $134mn as many switched to wheat and other legal crops. However, poor rainfall and persistent drought left more than 40% of farmland unplanted, deepening hardship across rural regions.

UNODC regional representative Oliver Stolpe said Afghanistan’s long-term recovery “depends on sustained international investment and viable economic alternatives”, urging equal attention to farmer livelihoods, demand reduction and the dismantling of trafficking networks.

The return of nearly 4mn Afghans from neighbouring countries has further strained already limited resources and employment opportunities, while cuts in humanitarian aid risk pushing vulnerable communities back into opium cultivation.

Although the price of dry opium dropped by 27% to about $570 per kilogram, it remains roughly five times higher than before the 2022 ban, keeping the trade lucrative for some growers.

At the same time, UNODC noted a rapid expansion of methamphetamine production, with seizures rising by around 50% by the end of 2024. The agency said criminal networks are increasingly turning to synthetic narcotics because of lower production costs, easier concealment and reduced vulnerability to environmental shocks.