Afghanistan’s opium crop falls 20 percent as synthetic drugs surge

Afghanistan’s once-booming opium industry has shrunk dramatically with cultivation falling by 20 percent in 2025, according to a United Nations report warning of a sharp rise in synthetic drug production.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said on Thursday that the area devoted to the cultivation of opium poppies dropped from 12,800 to 10,200 hectares (31,630 to 25,200 acres) this year, barely a fraction of the 232,000 hectares (573,000 acres) cultivated before the Taliban’s narcotics ban took effect in 2022.

The Taliban, which returned to power in 2021, outlawed poppy cultivation across the country a year later, ending decades of reliance on the illicit crop, which once made Afghanistan the world’s largest producer. In 2013, it supplied about 74 percent of the opium worldwide.