The Strain is Beginning to Show

Although the Taliban took power four years ago, and poppy cultivation has remained at historically low levels since 2023, declining opium prices, widespread poppy cultivation in Badakhshan, and the rise of opium production in the Taliban’s heartlands in the southwest indicate that the Taliban drugs ban is at risk. Regional factors are also undermining the poppy ban. Increased poppy cultivation in Pakistan is putting downward pressure on prices, undercutting the value of opium stocks that insulated landed farmers in southwest Afghanistan from the economic effects of the poppy ban, and could hasten the return to widespread poppy cultivation.  Tehran’s decision to deport large numbers of undocumented Afghan migrants eliminates a critical source of remittances and increases the number of those dependent on farming for their income. In doing so, it puts further economic pressure on already vulnerable households in provinces like Badakhshan and increases the likelihood of higher poppy cultivation in 2026. As greater numbers of farmers are made vulnerable by the ban, the Taliban will have to choose between at least tacitly allowing the return of widespread poppy cultivation and deploying greater levels of coercion, including against its supporters in the southwest.

The 2025 opium harvest in Afghanistan is complete. Although imagery-based estimates are available for only 23 of the country’s 34 provinces, there is some value in offering an interim assessment of levels of cultivation given Afghanistan’s historical role as the primary supplier of global opiates. It is also worth considering the economic and political ramifications of the continuing drugs ban not just on two of the key poppy-growing provinces in Afghanistan - Helmand and Badakhshan – but also on neighbouring Pakistan, where cultivation has risen significantly in 2025 as a direct result.  These developments tell us something about how farmers, markets, and the local authorities have responded to the Taliban leadership’s drugs ban this year and give us some indication of what might happen to opium supplies in the future.

The crop so far

Overall, it is likely that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan will increase in 2025 but will remain at historically low levels. Imagery analysis of 23 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces shows 7,978 hectares under poppy cultivation, which exceeds the entire country's cultivation in 2024 of 7,382 hectares (See Figure 1).

Figure 1: Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan for completed provinces at time of writing.

Of course, the final estimate for 2025 will be higher, as although the provinces included in this interim assessment encompass those that have typically been the largest opium producers – such as Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, and Farah - patterns of poppy cultivation changed significantly following the imposition of the Taliban drugs ban in late 2022 (see Figure 2).  In fact, in 2024, these 23 provinces were only responsible for 34% of total cultivation, and imagery estimates for significant poppy growing provinces like Badakhshan, Baghlan and Dai Kundi are still pending.

Figure 2: Following the Taliban’s enforcement of the ban on poppy cultivation, the crop has been concentrated in the northeast province of Badakhshan.

The estimate for Badakhshan will be particularly important given that this single province has been responsible for as much as half of Afghanistan’s poppy crop since 2023 when the Taliban began enforcing the poppy ban.  Initial assessments of high-resolution imagery show falling poppy cultivation in the more accessible irrigated areas, but significant increases in planting in more remote rainfed areas, but only for the rainfed crop to be blighted by the failure of spring rains and drought (see Figures 3 and 4).

Figure 3: In 2025, farmers planted less poppy in the more accessible irrigated areas in Badakhshan than in 2024.

Figure 4: Much more poppy was planted in the harder to reach, rainfed lands of Badakhshan in 2025.

It is important to note that the effects of the Taliban ban this year, in conjunction with the drought, will make it difficult to assess total cultivation in Badakhshan in 2025. This is especially true for sample-based imagery assessments that will likely give greater weight to irrigated areas where cultivation has typically been centred in the past.  Even census-based estimates, such as the one deployed by Alcis, that combine high-resolution imagery with multiple imagery collects over the poppy season for the whole country, are tested by the failing poppy crop in the rainfed areas, which will make it harder to distinguish from other crops, like wheat. Nevertheless, it will be important to establish the degree to which farmers in Badakhshan relocated their poppy crop and planted in the relatively unproductive rainfed lands, as this remains an important measure of farmer intent and the degree to which the rural population complied with the ban in 2025, and also offers some insights into what may happen next year.

When it comes to poppy cultivation, the Afghan crop in 2025 is likely to be far exceeded by Pakistan, particularly in the southwest province of Balochistan, where poppy cultivation has reached unprecedented levels this year.  High-resolution imagery shows numerous poppy fields of one hectare or more, as well as farms dedicated to opium production exceeding five hectares and located within a short distance from roads and urban areas with little evidence of crop destruction (see Figures 5 and 6). This is an indication of unrestrained cultivation that has not even been seen in Afghanistan, even in its peak years of opium production.

Figure 5: Poppy cultivation in Balochistan was extensive in 2025: farms were large and in some areas the crop  occupied as much as 70% of total agricultural land.

Figure 6: There was also little evidence of eradication in Balochistan in 2025. Even where crop destruction was seen the majority of the crop was left unscathed and  was  harvested later.

Moreover, widespread poppy cultivation in Balochistan in 2025 and the flow of Pakistani opium into Afghanistan continue to exert downward pressure on opium prices and reduce the value of opium stocks in Afghanistan (see Figure 7). In doing so, it threatens to undercut the economic benefits the Taliban’s landed constituents in southwest Afghanistan have gained from the drugs ban, thereby undermining their support for prohibition and those enforcing it.

Figure 7: In 2025, opium prices continued to fall in Afghanistan despite a third year of historically low levels of poppy cultivation. 

Rising cultivation and disquiet in the Taliban heartlands

So far, imagery analysis shows that the most significant increases in poppy cultivation in 2025 have occurred in the southern provinces: Kandahar rose from 777 to 4,062 hectares, Uruzgan from 240 to 1,166 hectares, and Helmand from 748 to 1,267 hectares. While these figures represent substantial percentage increases, they remain a small fraction of pre-ban levels—these three provinces alone accounted for three-quarters of Afghanistan's enormous poppy cultivation of well over 200,000 hectares in 2022. At the same time, as a growing number of farmers in the Taliban’s heartlands are seen to have evaded the drugs ban, it will become increasingly difficult for the authorities to prevent a return to widespread poppy cultivation in these key poppy growing provinces (see Figure 8).

Figure 8: In 2025, poppy cultivation in Helmand was more restrained in the central districts, with fields hidden from view. In contrast, in the more remote northern districts and former desert areas, poppy fields were larger, contiguous and visible from the roadside.

Imagery also shows that agricultural diversification remains minimal in the southern provinces where poppy was concentrated, suggesting that farmers anticipate a return to poppy cultivation in the future. Three years after the ban was imposed, wheat occupies over 90% of the land cultivated in the winter in Farah, Helmand, Nimroz, and Uruzgan, with no significant shift to high-value perennial or annual crops that would indicate sustainable economic alternatives (see Figure 9). Total cultivated area in the winter season has declined significantly—in Zabul it dropped 46% and in Kandahar 36% since 2022—as farmers leave land fallow rather than grow further wheat. The failure to transition to high-value horticulture, combined with an absence of employment opportunities, makes a return to widespread poppy cultivation more likely once farmers deplete their opium stocks.

Figure 9: Winter crop cultivation in mixed eastern provinces of Afghanistan.

The economic effects of the poppy ban in the south and southwest are also creating dangerous disparities between landed and landless. Landed farmers with opium stocks continue to prosper, with many reporting improved living standards due to high opium prices allowing them to fund weddings, medical treatment, and business investments. Those in former desert areas are particularly advantaged due to their large landholdings and history of extensive poppy cultivation, resulting in substantial inventories of opium (currently estimated at 11,984 metric tons)¹, despite such low levels of poppy cultivation since 2022. It is these inventories that have proven critical in insulated landed farmers in the southwest from the economic effects of the Taliban’s drug ban and ensured their continued support.

In stark contrast, sharecroppers earn less than US$1 per person per day and cannot meet their basic needs (see Figure 10). Migration patterns reflect the absence of economic alternatives to poppy in southwest Afghanistan as land-poor farmers increasingly view migration to Balochistan province of Pakistan for poppy cultivation as a viable alternative to growing poppy in Afghanistan. Detailed economic analysis shows that this group of farmers cannot meet their basic needs as sharecroppers in Helmand and the southwest (see Figure 11). Whereas this year some farmers went to Balochistan to work in the poppy harvest, many anticipate leasing or sharecropping land and cultivating poppy for the entire season in 2026.

Figure 10: As these examples show, in the absence of poppy cultivation current cropping systems mean that those sharecropping land in southwest Afghanistan earn considerably less than US$ 1 per person per day and cannot meet their basic needs.

Figure 11: Under current cropping systems in Helmand only those who own two hectares of surface irrigated land & three hectares of former desert land can meet the basic needs of a family of ten (annual income of US$ 7,850).

It is also noteworthy that a new vulnerable group is emerging in the south and southwest: small landholders with less than two hectares. Increasing numbers of these farmers, particularly in northern Helmand, where farms often measure less than one hectare, are depleting their opium stocks after three years of the ban. Unable to meet household needs through agriculture alone and lacking non-farm income opportunities, they face destitution. In contrast to the landless who were first to be marginalised by the ban in southwest Afghanistan, this group has political influence within their communities and includes constituencies of prominent Taliban commanders, making their economic difficulties potentially destabilising and the continuation of the ban more challenging for the authorities.

A growing economic crisis in the northeast, despite continued poppy cultivation

While cultivation is rising in the south and southwest in 2025, the Taliban authorities have made some progress in deterring poppy cultivation in the northeast this poppy season. For example, high-resolution imagery shows that farmers in Badakhshan cultivated much less poppy in the accessible irrigated areas in 2025 compared to 2024 (see Figures 12, 13 and 14). Furthermore, recognising the heightened risk of crop destruction, those farmers that did persist with cultivation in irrigated areas sought to hide their crop from the authorities, cultivating it away from the roadside, even concealing poppy within fields of wheat (see Figure 15).

Figure 12: Imagery shows that in 2025 poppy cultivation declined in the irrigated areas of Faizabad district compared with 2024.

Figure 13: Imagery shows that in 2025 poppy cultivation declined in the irrigated areas of Jurm district compared with 2024.

Figure 14: Imagery shows that in 2025 poppy cultivation declined in the irrigated areas of Khash district compared with 2024

Figure 15: In 2025, some farmers who persisted with cultivation in irrigated areas in Badakhshan concealed their poppy in wheat fields.

However, while farmers cultivated less poppy in irrigated areas there was significantly more planting on less productive rainfed lands, where the crop subsequently failed due to the drought that beset the region. The scale of poppy cultivation in the rainfed lands this year is dramatic, and there is a high likelihood that expansion of cultivation in these more remote areas exceeds any reduction achieved in the irrigated fields (see Figure 16), though yields will be very low. This effort to relocate the poppy crop to areas farmers believe it was less likely to be destroyed by the Taliban denotes dissent and an effort to circumvent the drugs ban. The failure of the crop due to inadequate spring rains is likely to result in lower opium production in Badakhshan in 2025, but it is important to recognise that this is a function of exogenous factors and not the Taliban drug ban (see Figure 17).

Figure 16: Farmers in Badakhshan took advantage of unseasonal rains in the fall of 2024  to plant large amounts of poppy in their rainfed land and to circumvent the Taliban’s efforts to prevent cultivation in  more accessible irrigated areas.

Figure 17: However, the failure of the spring rains has resulted in very low yields for the poppy crop planted in the fall of 2024 and the failure of those crops planted in the spring of 2025.

Despite continued poppy cultivation in 2025, farmers in Badakhshan now face an acute economic crisis. Having relocated their poppy crop from the more productive and accessible irrigated lands to the drought-prone rainfed lands because of the Taliban’s counternarcotics efforts, farmers in the northeast are increasingly vulnerable. The failure of the spring rains in 2025 hit these rainfed lands the hardest, and poppy yields are particularly low, denying farmers a critical source of income (see Figure 18).

Figure 18: With such low poppy yields in 2025 farmers in Badakhshan will not be able to meet the basic needs of a typical family of eight (annual income of US$6,278)

Typically, many rural households in Badakhshan have family members in Iran despite continued poppy cultivation in defiance of the Taliban drugs ban. Unable to meet their basic needs due to the drought and a failed poppy crop, many would have looked to send more family members to Iran later in the year, but they may have had to abandon this coping strategy following the Israel-Iran war and Tehran’s decision in early July 2025 to deport undocumented Afghan migrants en masse. By eliminating a critical source of remittances and increasing the number of those dependent on farming for their income, Tehran’s policy of mass deportations will put further economic pressure on already vulnerable households in Badakhshan (as well as other provinces), increasing the likelihood of more poppy cultivation in 2026.

Moreover, the Taliban’s efforts to destroy what remained of the poppy crop in early July 2025 in the remote district of Khash in Badakhshan may have made matters worse. Given the combined impact of the drought on the rainfed crop and falling opium prices, as well as the absence of viable economic alternatives, it should not have been a surprise to the authorities that farmers in this district would resist and attempt to protect what poppy they had cultivated on their irrigated lands (see Figure 19). It was against this backdrop that attempts to agree on a face-saving compromise by the provincial authorities now dominated by Pashtoons, and the former Governor, Amanuddin Mansoor, a prominent Badakhshi leader in the Taliban movement, broke down and an aggressive eradication campaign was launched, resulting in the death of at least seven people, reports of significant crop destruction, and growing local hostility towards the Taliban authorities.

It is difficult to see who could benefit from this move so late in the season, particularly amidst increasingly acrimonious ethnic divides. Even prior to the campaign, farmers in Khash and the surrounding districts in Badakhshan would have looked for ways to expand poppy cultivation in 2026, and explored ways to further circumvent the ban and make up for the poor yields for their rainfed lands this year. Tehran’s decision to deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghans further increases the economic pressures for increased poppy cultivation in Badakhshan next year, and in doing so sets the stage for further unrest next year between a rural Tajik population with no economic alternatives and an increasingly unpopular provincial administration that may look to build on its counternarcotics campaign this year.

Figure 19: The decision to mount an eradication campaign in the district of Khash, so late in the season, and after it had becoming increasingly evident that the poppy crop was low yielding, prompted violence and unrest.

An uncertain but challenging future

It is unclear how the drugs ban in Afghanistan will evolve. After all, few would have anticipated opium prices continuing their downward trajectory following the initial unprecedented spike in 2023 when the poppy ban was first enforced, and three consecutive years of historically low levels of opium production in Afghanistan. Yet, opium prices in Afghanistan continue to decline, indicating that there is sufficient supply on the market. Prices have fallen from their December 2023 peak of US$1,024 per kilogram to approximately US$400 by July 2025. This decline reflects continuing supplies of opiates including from substantial inventories held by landed farmers in southwest Afghanistan, continued widespread cultivation in Badakhshan, and increased poppy cultivation in Pakistan, as well as market uncertainty caused by the Iran-Israel war.  

Evidence from Afghanistan shows that poppy bans do not have an immediate and devastating economic effect on the whole population. Rather the impact is uneven and affects different population groups at different times.  The current poppy ban shows that while many of the land- poor were marginalised immediately, the landed in the southwest prospered buoyed by the increased value of their opium stocks and rising opium prices. The most advantaged farmers typically have sufficient land to meet their basic needs despite refraining from poppy cultivation, and have other sources of income - a shop, a family member with a government job, livestock or other items they can sell (including opium) - which allow them to carry the economic costs of the ban for some years.

Consequently, political resistance to a ban is also an iterative process that builds over time as ever larger numbers of farmers face destitution and begin to defy efforts to prevent poppy cultivation.  The economically marginal can be numerous but their influence is limited. They typically have few options but to accept the ban, or as we have seen in southwest Afghanistan, relocate to Balochistan in Pakistan and cultivate poppy in areas beyond the reach of the Taliban authorities. In Badakhshan, farmers have relocated production but also been able to resist eradication due to the overwhelming number of farmers in the province that are dependent on poppy cultivation for their livelihood. 

However, the pace of resistance can hasten dramatically as those with power and influence in the countryside with direct links to the political leadership either face economic ruin themselves or are confronted by a growing number of impoverished landed rural constituents impoverished by a poppy ban.  When this happens, the ban becomes politically divisive as landed farmers begin to act collectively and urge the rural elite to press the political leadership for a return to poppy cultivation. As past examples in Afghanistan highlight, at this point a failure to act in the interests of the wider community not only prompts the displacement of rural leaders but also growing support for armed groups who gain traction in these areas because they assure a return to poppy cultivation. It was precisely this process that allowed the Taliban to gain a stronger foothold in many parts of rural Afghanistan during the Afghan Republic.

Currently, several indicators suggest that the Taliban drugs ban in Afghanistan is under increasing pressure and that it will be increasingly difficult for the authorities to maintain. The first indicator is the re-emergence of poppy cultivation in the southwest provinces, the Taliban’s political heartlands. While in 2025 in the more accessible central areas of Helmand like Nad-e-Ali, poppy cultivation remained hidden and limited, in the more remote northern districts and former desert areas, farmers openly cultivated poppy in contiguous fields visible from roads. These enforcement patterns reveal uneven Taliban control and growing internal tensions. Rumours of this disparity prompted formal delegations from central Helmand to approach the local authorities in the fall of 2024 and request to return to poppy cultivation this growing season. Eradication has also been a lot more limited this year in the southwest, despite marked increases in the amount of poppy grown.

Given the rise in poppy cultivation in the northern districts of Helmand in 2025, the Taliban authorities are likely to come under even greater political pressure to allow a return to widespread poppy cultivation in 2026. This growing perception of selective enforcement, alongside the economic effects of an increased number of farmers in surface-irrigated areas of the southwest depleting their stocks, further risks undermining the ban's legitimacy and exacerbates pressures for the Taliban to pursue a more aggressive universal policy of enforcement or abandon it altogether.

The second indicator of the growing strain that the poppy ban is exposed to is widespread poppy cultivation in Badakhshan in 2025. This reflects the challenges that provincial and local authorities face in imposing prohibition on a population that has no viable economic alternatives. While the Taliban have gained some measure of compliance from farmers in the irrigated areas of Badakhshan in 2025, cultivation has been relocated to the more remote rainfed lands and grown over what would appear to be a much larger area. It is only a quirk of fate (and a heavy dose of climate change) that led to the failure of spring rains and a poor-yielding poppy crop in these rainfed lands.

The eradication effort in Badakhshan was also circumspect for much of the 2025 poppy season, suggesting that the authorities had looked to avoid the widespread confrontation experienced the year before. Where there was pushback from local communities, the Taliban quickly retreated. Moreover, the authorities actively avoided mounting a campaign in central Argo and Darayem where there had been such widespread dissent and violence in the spring of 2024.

Hence, the decision to mount a more aggressive eradication effort in Khash seemed uncharacteristic, and possibly more a function of internal Taliban politics and an attempt by the former Badakhshi Governor to present himself as a valuable interlocutor between the Pashtoon provincial authorities and the local population, than of drug control strategy per se. Perhaps, it was an attempt by the authorities to signal to farmers in the province at the close of the season that poppy cultivation would not be tolerated next year. However, in the absence of any viable economic alternatives, the failure of the rainfed crops this year, and the economic effects of both the loss of remittances from Iran and an inflow of returnees, it is difficult to see why farmers in Badakhshan would not cultivate poppy next year.

A third indicator of the fragility of the current poppy ban is the lack of crop diversification in Afghanistan. In fact, it should be of considerable concern that three years after the ban was imposed, farmers in the southwest continue to plant overwhelming amounts of wheat rather than high-value perennials or annuals. An increase in the cultivation of perennials would not only denote a more permanent change in agricultural practice, but a shift in the attitude and market confidence of the rural population. The geographic coverage of orchards and vineyards, limited to areas where they have always been concentrated, reflects insufficient demand both domestically and abroad, as well as a rural population unwilling or unable to make expensive and long-term investments in their land. Furthermore, while it is easy to replace an annual crop like wheat with poppy when conditions allow, a farmer is much less likely to cut down their orchards and vineyards given the sunk costs associated with their planting and early years as well as the relatively remunerative returns. Ultimately, land cultivated with wheat can easily be returned to poppy.

Moreover, from an economic perspective, analysis shows that landed farmers in the surface-irrigated areas of the southwest with less than two hectares of land cannot meet their basic needs with current cropping systems that consist of wheat, cotton, maize and mung bean.  Without high-value perennial or annual cash crops or non-farm incomes, these farmers will deplete any opium stocks they retained and find themselves vulnerable. Like those with even smaller land holdings, and the landless, they too will be compelled to relocate to Balochistan or look to return to poppy cultivation on their own land. An expansion of poppy cultivation in Balochistan will impose its own costs on landed farmers in Afghanistan, undercutting the value of the opium stocks that have insulated them from the economic effects of the poppy ban, and hastening their return to widespread poppy cultivation.

A final indicator of the fragility of the ban is the reliance on out-migration, as this too shows how limited the economic options are in Afghanistan and how Tehran’s policy of mass deportations will make matters worse. In Badakhshan, small and marginal landholdings, and much fewer jobs in both the public and private sector following the collapse of the former Afghan Republic, have resulted in a growing reliance on remittances from family members in Iran despite continued poppy cultivation: an income stream that has now been curtailed by Tehran’s policy of mass deportations. In 2025, the land-poor of southwestern Afghanistan who have been left destitute by the Taliban poppy ban have departed for Balochistan in neighbouring Pakistan in increasing numbers. There they have leased or sharecropped large farms and all but mono-cropped poppy; and even more are anticipated to do the same in 2026 (see Figure 20 and 21).

Figure 20: High resolution satellite imagery of the Loralai region of Balochistan in Pakistan shows very large adjoining fields of poppy were grown in 2025.

Figure 21: High resolution satellite imagery of the Gulistan region of Balochistan in Pakistan shows very large adjoining fields of poppy were grown in 2025.

These coping strategies suggest there are few viable agricultural alternatives for those left most vulnerable by the poppy ban, and that investing in job creation would be the most appropriate policy response, rather than crop substitution, or so called “alternative development.” The decision to deport large numbers of Afghans, by Iran and Afghanistan’s other neighbours, will only increase the demands on already limited land and resources, and compel many rural households to return to poppy to meet their basic needs.  As such, there is the risk that a growing number of farmers are alienated by the ban and have few economic options other than to resist the Taliban, plant poppy and thereby undermine their rule. As greater numbers find themselves economically vulnerable, the Taliban will have to choose between ignoring the return of widespread cultivation, and deploying greater levels of coercion, including against its own supporters in the southwest.

Ultimately, the absence of viable economic alternatives, drought, and the mass deportations of undocumented Afghan migrants from Iran, constrains the livelihoods of rural households in many poppy growing provinces. In the coming season most will hope that enough farmers choose to grow poppy and may even coordinate within communities to pressure local commanders not to act against the crop. Historically, this kind of widespread rural dissent is how several poppy bans have unravelled in rural Afghanistan - as well as a few governments in Kabul - and is symbolic of the decentralised and negotiated nature of political power in rural Afghanistan. Only four years after their capture of Kabul, and under increasing economic and political pressures, it seems unrealistic to believe that the Taliban are completely immune to these precedents.

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.

1. This estimate of the volume of stocks with landed farmers in the former desert areas of the southwest draws on our initial assessment of March 2024. This initial assessment focused on the 48,500 households in these former desert areas (237,000 hectares) and used high resolution imagery, as well as geospatial and livelihood analysis to determine average landholding (4.89 hectares), cropping patterns between 2019 and 2022 (which often involved up to 2 hectares of poppy per household each year), and the net income derived from the different crops grown. It determined that given the average farm size in these former desert areas of the southwest, landed farmers could meet their basic needs from the land they dedicated to non-poppy crops (up to 2.89 hectares) and only needed to sell their opium for other expensive but intermittent household expenses, such as the cost of marriage, healthcare, a vehicle, and the solar powered deep wells used to irrigate their land (typically around US$4,000 per annum). This latest estimate of stocks builds on this initial analysis and calculates the amount of opium stocks a landed farmer would need to sell to meet these extra annual household expenses in the years following the imposition of the ban. Given their relative wealth it is assumed these farmers sell their opium in October each year - typically a time when prices are rising but not at their peak – in 2022, 2023, and 2024, and then in July in 2025 (due to available data). This means that with the fluctuation in opium prices a typical farmer in these former desert areas would have needed to sell 11.5 kilograms of opium in 2022, 8.3 kilograms in 2023, 8.3 kilograms in 2024, and 9.9 kilograms in 2025 - a total of 38 kilograms - from their stocks to meet these extra annual household expenses. Overall, this reduction in stocks represents a fraction of the 283 kilograms of opium we estimated landed households in the former desert areas had accumulated by 2022. When extrapolated across the 48,500 households living in the former desert areas of the southwest potential opium stocks in 2025 would be 11,884 kilograms (the equivalent of 642 metric tons of heroin hydrochloride at a conversion rate of 18.5:1).