The methamphetamine industry is metastasizing in response to the Taliban drugs ban

The methamphetamine economy is adapting in response to the Taliban’s continued efforts to curb production and trade in Afghanistan. While the industry maintains substantial productive capacity in Afghanistan, it operates at a much smaller scale than in the past. More importantly, the Taliban’s actions to curb the methamphetamine industry in Afghanistan are having a direct impact on the country’s neighbours. Balochistan province in Pakistan appears to be especially vulnerable to widespread drugs production given its permissive environment, the prevalence of armed groups, and a skilled Afghan work force that can easily move across porous borders. Far from being eliminated, the methamphetamine industry is metastasizing in response to the Taliban drugs ban and embedding in the restive tri-border area between Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, where it will be particularly difficult to tackle.

 

The Taliban continue to suppress the production of methamphetamine in Afghanistan, raising transaction costs and reducing the incomes of those involved. Evidence points to a reduction in operational capacity, with smaller ephedrine and methamphetamine labs and a reduction in both the frequency and the amounts produced (see Figure 1). Lower production in turn has led to reduced demand for the raw input ephedra from the central highlands, which has also become increasingly difficult to harvest due to the Taliban drugs ban and increased vigilance on the roads. The increased risks and costs of production combined with reduced orders for Afghan methamphetamine and falling prices, have reduced both profitability and the incomes of those at each stage of the ephedra-ephedrine-methamphetamine value chain (see Figure 2).       

Figure 1: Prior to the Taliban enforcing the drugs ban in Afghanistan in 2022, ephedrine labs were markedly larger than in 2025. Typically, large volumes of ephedra were stored outside the lab and both physical and liquid waste would be found beyond the compound walls. Since the ban was imposed ephedrine labs are more discrete, produce smaller and fewer batches and considerable effort is made to retain any waste within the compound walls.

Figure 2: The economic effects of lower levels of ephedrine production are felt across highland communities and further downstream not just by those employed by the lab.  

Furthermore, ephedrine and methamphetamine labs continue their move into ever more remote areas in the wake of the Taliban’s continued efforts to curtail production in Afghanistan. Abdul Wadood bazaar in the district of Bakwa in Farah province in southwestern Afghanistan, the epicentre of the ephedra trade until 2021, remains empty, and there is little evidence of ephedrine production in the surrounding area (see Figure 3). Prior to the Taliban’s closure of the bazaar in September 2022, there were more than 400 ephedrine labs located in Bakwa and neighbouring Khashrud, by October 2025 there were less than a handful operating in the same area.

Figure 3: Abdul Wadood bazaar was the centre of the ephedra trade until late 2021. At its peak 11,886 cubic metres of ephedra were stored in the bazaar covering an area of 30,000 square metres. Four weeks after the Taliban imposed a ban on the harvest and trade of ephedra in December 2021, the bazaar was emptied of ephedra and it has remained empty ever since.   

Even in the remote central highlands, ephedrine labs are smaller and more discrete than they were in the past, and each year they are moved further up the valleys in a bid to escape the authorities’ growing reach (see Figures 4 and 5). So as not to be discovered, batch sizes in these labs are smaller, and lab owners are more conscientious in their management of the physical and liquid waste that is ubiquitous with ephedra-based production. Imagery also shows how mobile these operations are, with most labs continually shifting location and very few working from the same location for more than a twelve-month period.

Figure 4: As the Taliban have continued to press their drugs ban ephedrine labs have relocated into more mountainous remote areas.   

Figure 5: In many of the more accessible parts of northern Helmand ephedrine labs have closed and relocated to more remote areas inaccessible by car.

The pressure against the methamphetamine industry in Afghanistan thus has induced further structural changes, resulting in the localisation of ephedrine production in the central highlands, a shift to small-scale production and “micro labs”, and improved conversion rates. For example, in contrast to the period between 2019 and 2023, when many ephedrine cooks in the central highlands of Afghanistan had direct experience of working in Bakwa and Bahramchar in the southwest, there is a now new generation of cooks who have learned how to make ephedrine locally.

In fact, during 2019-2023, those who came to the central highlands to produce ephedrine were typically from southwest Afghanistan. They were attracted by premium rates of pay and were fleeing from the initial interdiction efforts by the previous Afghan Islamic Republic government in 2019, and then by the Taliban’s closure of the ephedrine labs in Bakwa in 2022. As their knowledge of ephedrine production spread to the wider population in the central highlands, the wages of cooks have fallen, and small-scale household production has emerged as a way of supplementing incomes and minimising the risk of detection. In the process of honing their skills, this new generation of cooks extract greater amounts of ephedrine from ephedra.

While the methamphetamine economy falters in Afghanistan, it is expanding elsewhere

It is evident that villagers in the central highlands have been significantly affected by the combined effect of mass deportations from Iran, drought, and increased efforts by the Taliban to enforce the prohibition against ephedra harvesting and ephedrine production. Those in the central highlands have a history of migration to Iran and therefore have been impacted by Tehran’s June 2025 decision to deport large numbers of Afghan migrants. This policy denies rural households in these areas an important local source of non-farm income and increases the number of people dependent on an already limited agricultural base. Drought has also hit these areas hard, reducing agricultural yields, especially those of fodder crops on rainfed lands in an area where livestock are a critical source of food and income.

The Taliban’s efforts to prohibit the harvest of ephedra and the production of ephedrine has further contributed to the downturn in the economy of these highland villages. For example, in 2023 a single ephedrine lab in the central highlands would have created a total of 440 days of work and US$8,892 in income for those operating the lab and the villagers collecting the ephedra. At reduced operational capacity because of the ban, this same lab would provide only 291 days of work and only US$3,470 in wages: a 60% drop in income over a two-year period.

However, it is not just in the central highlands where these economic effects are being felt. Evidence suggest that incomes are falling at each stage of the methamphetamine value chain in Afghanistan due to reduced orders from downstream traders, falling prices, lower production, and higher transaction costs caused by the Taliban ban (see Figure 6). Economic analysis shows that there has been a significant downturn in income for all those involved in the methamphetamine industry in Afghanistan (see Figure 2). Deflated prices caused by fewer orders, combined with markedly lower levels of production, have conflated with increased costs. The increased risk of arrest, as well as the destruction of the drugs seized and the impounding of vehicles by the Taliban, have led many traders and harvesters to abandon the industry. Those who persist in Afghanistan recognise the limited financial advantages and argue they continue as they have few economic alternatives.

Figure 6: Ephedrine and methamphetamine prices have followed a downward trajectory since September 2022 when the Taliban closed both Abdul Wadood bazaar and the ephedrine labs operating in the surrounding area.

It is of particular concern that while the methamphetamine industry is downsizing in Afghanistan under pressure from the Talban, there are no such restraints amongst some of the country’s neighbours. Moreover, some of those who were at the vanguard of relocating ephedrine production to the central highlands are now at the forefront of increasing methamphetamine production in Pakistan and to a lesser extent Iran. No longer in demand in the central highlands and under continued pressure from the Taliban in southwest Afghanistan, ephedrine and methamphetamine cooks from places like Bakwa and Bahramchar, as well as other parts of Helmand and Farah, are reported to be crossing the border into Iran, and in particular into Balochistan in Pakistan to take up production there, utilizing ephedra locally harvested from higher-altitude hills and mountains in the province (see Figures 7 and 8).

Figure 7: In some parts of Balochistan multiple ephedrine labs are found in close proximity.

Figure 8: Many of these ephedrine labs are large and make little effort to conceal their activities.

In many ways it is a process that mirrors the movement of Afghan poppy farmers into Balochistan over the last two years since the imposition of the Taliban drugs ban. Unable to cultivate poppy in Afghanistan, these farmers have drawn on existing contacts across the border from whom they can lease land, established partnerships for sharing the costs of installing solar powered deep wells, and maximised opium production, in many cases monocropping poppy.

Similarly, ephedrine and methamphetamine cooks from southwest Afghanistan are in high demand in Balochistan and Iran, and command premium rates of pay. Consequently, the methamphetamine industry is expanding its footprint in Balochistan supported by locally sourced ephedra, Afghan skills, and a permissive environment, including a porous border. High-resolution imagery shows large ephedrine labs in multiple locations in Balochistan (see Figure 9 and 10). This is a marked difference from the labs currently operating in Afghanistan, which are much smaller and where significant efforts are being made to conceal their activities from the authorities.

Figure 9: A typical ephedrine lab in Killa Abdullah in Balochistan, complete with large numbers of bags of ephedra and significant physical and liquid waste.

Figure 10: These ephedrine labs will often involve several buildings, significant amounts of waste and have a footprint that is visible from the ground and from satellite imagery.

A shifting problem

Ultimately, in the absence of licit economic alternatives the Taliban drugs ban has created a mobile workforce skilled in different elements of drugs production that is playing a key role in increasing the supply of opiates and methamphetamine in Pakistan. Those involved in drugs production in Afghanistan are increasingly relocating to Pakistan. Examples of this can be found amongst farmers from southwest Afghanistan relocating to Balochistan to grow poppy, but also with ephedrine and methamphetamine cooks unable to operate under the Taliban drugs ban in Afghanistan.

In both of these cases, production in Balochistan is at a different scale. Poppy is often mono-cropped and grown on much larger fields than previously seen in Afghanistan, while ephedrine labs in Balochistan are substantially larger and make no effort to conceal their activities from those in the surrounding area (see Figures 11 and 12). The scale at which Afghan farmers and cooks are operating in Balochistan says much about the permissive environment there but also about these individuals’ own desire to maximise short-term returns, recognising that once local capacity is built they will no longer be needed, as has been the case with the ephedrine cooks from the southwest who had come to the central highlands of Afghanistan in earlier years.

By embedding in Balochistan, both methamphetamine and opiate industries pose a significant problem to regional stability in this restive tri-border area. There is a growing number of armed groups positioning themselves in Balochistan, and it contains multiple cross-border value chains from which they can predate and extract revenue, including fuel, drugs, transit goods and irregular migrants. The production of significant volumes of opiates and now ephedrine and methamphetamine in Balochistan opens up a new and valuable revenue stream which, once embedded in local and regional power structures, will be much harder to tackle.

Figure 11: In response to the Taliban drugs ban Afghan farmers are increasingly moving across the border into Balochistan to grow poppy, often monocropping it on much bigger farms than they had in Afghanistan.

Figure 12: In contrast to the much smaller and more discrete ephedrine labs currently found in the central highlands of Afghanistan, ephedrine labs in Balochistan are significantly larger and have more in common with those found in southwest Afghanistan in 2021 and 2022, when there were no restrictions in place.

David Mansfield has been conducting research on illicit economies in Afghanistan and on its borders each year since 1997. David has a PhD in development studies and is the author of “A State Built on Sand: How opium undermined Afghanistan.” He has produced more than eighty research-based products on rural livelihoods and cross-border economies, many for the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, and working in close partnership with Alcis. David was also the lead researcher on the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s Counter Narcotics: Lessons from the US Experience in Afghanistan, covering the period from 2002- 2017.