Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban have sought to completely eradicate the opium market by banning poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. The ban, enacted in April 2022, has successfully decreased opium production by an estimated 95% by 2023. While there were roughly 233,000 hectares of planted poppies to produce opium in 2022, cultivation dropped to as low as 10,800 hectares in 2023. Despite opium cultivation marginally rising to 12,800 hectares in 2024, with some provinces like Badakhshan resisting the ban, production remains at an all-time low.
In theory, the near-total eradication of opium in Afghanistan, the country where 80% of the world’s opium supply, should mean that, finally, the drug and its derivatives will disappear. However, the reality is obviously very different.
Instead, what seems to have happened is that Afghan poppy, opium and heroin cultivators and manufacturers are migrating to Pakistan, transferring the industry’s workforce and technical knowledge to build up a new supply for this profitable and highly demanded set of substances.
The balloon effect in action
‘The Balloon effect’ broadly refers to the phenomenon whereby suppressing production in one area causes it to shift elsewhere – much like squeezing a filled balloon, where pressure in one spot causes expansion in another. When pressed, the air does not disappear; it moves to another area of lesser resistance. The drug market behaves similarly: when an intense crackdown in a drug’s cultivation, production, or distribution happens somewhere, the market moves to an area where conditions are better.
The most notable example of the balloon effect in drug policy comes from coca production in South America: through the 1990s and early 2000s, Colombia engaged in a US-backed massive operation to eradicate coca crops, pushing cultivation into more remote Colombian regions or to neighbouring countries, like Peru and Bolivia. Displacement has not reduced coca or cocaine’s production: in fact, cocaine production hit an all-time high in 2023: crop sizes and production yields have reached unprecedented levels.
The displacement of coca’s market to more remote regions or other nations also brought drug trafficking and associated insecurity from organised criminal operations to new areas. Peru, now the second-largest producer of cocaine in the world, has seen a rise in drug-related violence and corruption. Colombian organised criminal groups now operate across borders, employing drug trafficking funds in increasingly diverse activities, like illegal mining, logging and more.
A similar process seems to be happening with the poppy market in Afghanistan. Satellite imagery analysed by Alcis, a geospatial analysis organisation, reveals an unprecedented increase in poppy cultivation in Balochistan: it is the largest yet least populated province of Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran. Poppy fields now occupy up to 70% of farmland in Duki and Gulistan and over 8,100 hectares of poppy have been detected through high-resolution satellite images. Crucially, these areas were virtually poppy-free before the Taliban’s return to power. According to Alcis, this data suggests that, for the first time, opium cultivation in Pakistan next year could come to surpass that of Afghanistan.
This geographical reconfiguration of the opium supply illustrates the resilience of global drug markets in the face of national drug prohibition efforts. While stocks of pre-Taliban ban opium endure, the migration of future poppy cultivation to Pakistan shows a longer term plan to keep the market alive through displacement.
Farmer migration
The Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), an independent research organisation focused on Afghan political and social affairs, published a report containing interviews with three Afghan poppy farmers who moved to Pakistan to continue cultivating opium. There, they confirmed they moved across the border with both their crops and workforce to continue their past work.
Speaking with Jelena Bjelica, the author of the AAN’s report, she highlighted the farmer’s motivations to move their operations to Pakistan.
“It’s a financial opportunity,” Bjelica told TalkingDrugs.
“There are not any other viable agricultural opportunities for the farmers. These farmers have become experts in opium cultivation… they know the crop, they know what it needs and how to get the best out of it.”
When farmers have developed an expertise in cultivating such a valuable crop, it shouldn’t be a surprise they moved their work to where it can continue, putting their skills to good use.
Bjelica did add, however, that it’s still unclear how much of the opium workforce has migrated to Pakistan.
“We have no idea what the scale of the problem is, my impression is that this is not en masse migration… I would say it’s patchy,” Bjelica added.
This distinction highlights that, while there may be some level of the balloon effect underway, Afghan poppy farmers moving to Pakistan does not mean the market will fully move there. Existing poppy cultivators and opium producers in Afghanistan could choose to stay in place and wait out the current ban, hoping it may soon end or relax its enforcement. Poppies have thrived – and most likely will continue to – in Afghanistan’s arid climate. The movement of some farmers across borders could be an indication of production and supply routes being reconfigured and diffused into various nations, rather than fully displaced.
Effects on global opium markets
While the most visible consequences of Afghanistan’s opium ban have played out at the source, longer-term effects are beginning to surface further down the supply chain. In the short term, heroin trafficking continued largely unhindered thanks to large stockpiles of opium that traders and traffickers have amassed in anticipation of the 2021 ban. But as those reserves are used, the pressure will rise in consumer markets to further adulterate opium and heroin products to stretch out existing stocks.
According to the UNODC’s 2025 World Drug Report, supply shocks caused by the Taliban ban could have contributed to the growing production and distribution of synthetic opioids like fentanyl and nitazenes, particularly in Europe. Despite reports of stable heroin availability from Afghanistan, illegal producers and traffickers may prefer synthetic opioids due to their ease in production, small bulk and high potency effects, bypassing the need for plant-based opium altogether. This comes at a human cost, as greater synthetic opioid use has been linked to increased overdose deaths worldwide.
A whole-system approach is needed
At the moment, it’s unclear whether a newly configured Pakistan-Afghanistan opium supply would produce the same amount of opium as pre-Taliban Afghanistan did. However, if the global supply of opium remains low, the incentives to replace it with stronger and easily accessed synthetic opioids will only grow.
The movement of farmers across borders is a reminder that a fractured, nation-by-nation approach to dealing with illegal drug markets is bound to fail, and potentially exacerbate harms. From coca production in Latin America, we’ve seen that market displacement can actually lead to an explosion in production and instability in neighbouring countries. With the opioid market, we are already seeing the harms of a volatile market; synthetic opioids are increasingly found in global opioid supplies, presenting a massive health risk to consumers.
The current approach represents a resignation to an unwinnable game of cat-and-mouse: illegal drug traffickers can circumvent borders in ways that national forces simply cannot. A regional approach to dealing with drug markets will be crucial to address harms from drug production and distribution.
