Why Putin’s War on Ukraine Is Great News for Drug Traffickers
July 13, 2022
Conflict and instability tend to benefit the illicit drugs trade. Look at Afghanistan, where opium cultivation reached unprecedented levels during the U.S.-led war, or Myanmar, which has apparently been producing more and more methamphetamine since a coup plunged the country into chaos last year. Manufacturing of the amphetamine captagon has boomed on the back of Syria’s civil war and ensuing devastation, with millions of tablets regularly seized in the region.
Ukraine may turn out to be another example. The United Nations recently warned that the production and trafficking of narcotics could increase in the country following Russia’s invasion. True, Ukraine has so far not been a major source of narcotics, but it has potential as a synthetic drugs producer. Before the war, there was an increase in the tally of amphetamine labs dismantled in Ukraine, with the country registering the highest number of labs dismantled in the world in 2020.
Seizure data suggest that drug trafficking through Ukraine had also been expanding prior to the invasion. One of the routes for smuggling Afghan heroin to Europe transits through the country. Traffickers could now take advantage of the chaos to increase narcotic flows. They will also likely have an ample supply of opiates from Afghanistan. While the Taliban has vowed to ban drugs, the country’s dire economic situation makes it hard to stamp out the opium trade, which provides hundreds of thousands of Afghans with a livelihood.
And while the Taliban prohibited drug production and trafficking in April, the decree “appears largely unenforced” so far, according to the European Union’s (EU) drug agency. Afghanistan has also started manufacturing large amounts of methamphetamine using the local ephedra plant, and the EU is concerned that cheap Afghan meth could eventually make its way to Europe along established heroin-trafficking routes, of which Ukraine is one.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-putins-war-ukraine-great-news-drug-traffickers-203579