According to CNN, Afghan opium is responsible for 100,000 deaths each year. There are about 15 million people using heroin, morphine or opium around the world. This represents a $65 billion market for these drugs also funding terrorism and insurgencies. Over the past four years, the Taliban has raised between $450 and $600 million by “taxing” the traffickers and opium farmers. According to NATO there are more people killed by opiate heroin in NATO countries each year than there are NATO forces killed in Afghanistan in the the eight years that they have been there.
“The Afghan drug economy generates several hundred million dollars per year into evil hands: some with black turbans, some with white collars” said Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Costa went on to say that the reference regarding white collars is “to officials in the Afghan administration, federal government of Kabul or the provinces or the army or the police.”
He also reported authorities are only intercepting about 20 percent of opiate traffic around the world. Last month the UN issued a warning that two years’ worth of opium is effectively “missing,” probably stockpiled by the Taliban and criminal gangs.
The United Nations said that it is likely that more heroin from Afghanistan is coming to the United States and Canada than was previously expected. the two North American countries consume more than twice as much heroin than Latin America produces.
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