Medvedev pointed to the Taliban’s reduction in drug production

Drug production in Afghanistan has decreased by 95% since the end of last year, the Taliban (a movement recognized as terrorist and banned in Russia) has done what NATO countries could not do in 20 years, said Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev.

Medvedev in his publication on the Telegram channel referred based on data from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. In Afghanistan, since the end of 2022, as indicated by the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council, the area under poppy has decreased (from 233,000 to 11,000 hectares) and the volume of opium production has decreased (from 6,200 to 333 tons).

“In less than a year, the Taliban, no matter how they were treated, did what the coalition of NATO impotents led by Americans, supposedly fighting terrorism in the country, could not do in 20 years,” Medvedev wrote.

According to the politician, this happens when “the one who was really interested in exporting heroin to Russia and other countries” leaves the region. In Mexico, the drug situation has not changed, he added.

Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev previously noted that in the period from 2001 to 2021 in Afghanistan more than 40 times increased drug production. According to him, it was the American military that contributed to the spread of drug trafficking in the country.

The volume of opium poppy production in Afghanistan has increased by 32% since the Taliban came to power, according to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which was presented last fall. It noted that the Taliban, which came to power in August 2021, banned the cultivation of opium poppy and all types of drugs in April 2022. At the same time, cultivation in the country increased by 32% compared to the previous year and amounted to 233,000 hectares, which makes this year’s crop the third largest area under cultivation since monitoring began.