12/22/17

Taliban as an IED

© Paul fleet | 123rf.com

The President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani said that without drugs, the Afghan war would have been over. “The heroin is a very important driver of this war.” Former President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, said the opium problem was the single greatest threat to the long-term security, development and effective governance of Afghanistan. “Either Afghanistan destroys opium or opium will destroy Afghanistan.” The New York Times reported Afghanistan has consistently produced approximately 85% of the world’s opium, despite more than $8 billion spent by the US to eradicate the trade.

Economic factors are driving opium problem in Afghanistan. The United Nations publishes a yearly Human Development Report that “focuses on how human development can be ensured for every one—now and in future.” It uses a summary measure referred to as the Human Development Index (HDI) which assess progress in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and health life (measured by life expectancy), access to learning and knowledge (measured by expected years of schooling), and a decent standard of living (measured by Gross National Income per capita). Afghanistan’s HDI value for 2015 was 0.479, placing it in the lower section for human development at 169 out of 188 countries and territories.

As one of the poorest countries in the world, its 31 million people have an average per capita income of just $800, with 80 percent of its rural population living in poverty. Only 23 percent of Afghans have access to safe drinking water, and only 6 percent to electricity.

Colonel John Glaze wrote the above quote in a report for the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College titled, “Opium and Afghanistan: Reassessing U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy.” Glaze went to note how the high turn on investment from opium poppy cultivation drove an agricultural shift from growing traditional crops, like wheat, corn, barley, rice, to growing opium poppy. “In recent years, many poor farmers have turned to opium poppy cultivation to make a living because of the relatively high rate of return on investment compared to traditional crops. Consequently, Afghanistan’s largest and fastest cash crop is opium.”

Cultivating opium poppy makes powerful economic sense to the impoverished farmers of Afghanistan. It is the easiest crop to grow and the most profitable. Even though the Karzai government made opium poppy cultivation and trafficking illegal in 2002, many farmers, driven by poverty, continue to cultivate opium poppy to provide for their families. Indeed, poverty is the primary reason given by Afghan farmers for choosing to cultivate opium poppy. With a farm gate price of approximately $125 per kilogram for dry opium, an Afghan farmer can make 17 times more profit growing opium poppy—$4,622 per hectare, compared to only $266 per hectare for wheat.Opium poppy is also drought resistant, easy to transport and store, and, unlike many crops, requires no refrigeration and does not spoil. With Afghanistan’s limited irrigation, electricity, roads, and other infrastructure, growing traditional crops can be extremely difficult. In many cases, farmers are simply unable to support their families growing traditional crops; and because most rural farmers are uneducated and illiterate, they have few economically viable alternatives to growing opium poppy.

Business Insider reported an Afghan farmer could be paid $163 for a kilo of raw opium, which looks like a black sap. When the raw opium is refined into heroin, it can be sold for $2,300 to $3,500 per kilo at regional markets. “In Europe it has a wholesale value of about $45,000.”  In the past, most of the opium harvest was smuggled out of the country as raw opium and then refined in other countries. But now, officials estimate that half or more of Afghan opium is processed at some level within the country.

“Afghanistan’s economy has thus evolved to the point where it is now highly dependent on opium.” In 2006, revenue from opium cultivation was over $3 billion, more than 35% of the country’s total gross national product (GNP). Opium production has become Afghanistan’s top employer and the principle base of its economy. An estimated 10% of the population are involved in some way with opium cultivation. Yet less than 20% of the $3 billion in profits goes to the farmers that grow the opium.

Traditionally, processing of Afghan’s opium into heroin has taken place outside of Afghanistan; however, in an effort to reap more profits internally, Afghan drug kingpins have stepped up heroin processing within their borders. Heroin processing labs have proliferated in Afghanistan since the late 1990s, particularly in the unstable southern region, further complicating stabilization efforts. With the reemergence of the Taliban and the virtual absence of the rule of law in the countryside, opium production and heroin processing have dramatically increased, especially in the southern province of Helmand. In 2006, opium production in the province increased over 162 percent and now accounts for 42 percent of Afghan’s total opium output. According to the UNODC, the opium situation in the southern provinces is “out of control.”

The refining labs are simple, nondescript huts or caves containing maybe two dozen empty barrels for mixing, sacks or jugs of precursor chemicals, piles of firewood, and a press machine. They also have a generator, a water pump and a long hose to draw water from a nearby well. Afghan police and American Special Forces repeatedly ran into them all over Afghanistan in 2017. “Officials and diplomats are increasingly worried that the labs’ proliferation is one of the most troubling turns yet in the long struggle to end the Taliban insurgency.” Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister in charge of the counternarcotics police estimated his forces destroyed more than 100 of the estimated 400 to 500 labs in the country last year. However, “They can build a lab like this in one day.”

The NYT noted the Taliban has long profited by taxing and providing security for producers and smugglers. “But increasingly, the insurgents are directly getting into every stage of the drug business themselves, rivaling some of the major cartels in the region — and in some places becoming indistinguishable from them.” Refining makes the drug easier to smuggle and dramatically increases the profits for the Taliban. Officials estimate that up to 60% of the Taliban’s income now comes from the drug trade.

In country drug seizures suggest more opium is being processed within Afghanistan. Previously, the amount of opium seized would be five times or more than that of morphine and heroin. “In 2015, for example, about 30,000 kilograms, or 66,000 pounds, of opium was seized, compared with a little over 5,000 kilograms, or 11,000 pounds, of heroin and morphine combined.” But so far in 2107, the seizure numbers have reversed. The amount of heroin and morphine seized is double that of raw opium.

And there seems to be a direct relationship between recent Taliban gains territorially and the drug trade. The Southern Afghan provinces of Helmond, Uruzgan and Kandahar are where much of the country’s opium-poppy production occurred in 2016. They are also in the midst of the country’s provinces with the highest security risks. A senior Afghan official said: “If an illiterate local Taliban commander in Helmand makes a million dollars a month now, what does he gain in time of peace?” See the map below originating with the United Nations Department of Safety and Security.

The Taliban seem to be in the midst of changing from a fundamentalist Sunni political movement into a drug cartel. Their mixture of ideology, power and greed has led to a situation in Afghanistan that can be likened to a political and cultural IED. Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister in charge of the counternarcotics police said the Taliban used the growing insecurity over the past two years to establish more refining labs and move them closer to the opium fields. The Afghan deputy minister of counternarcotics said: “We have to merge these two things together — the counterterrorism and the counternarcotics. It has to go hand in hand, because if you destroy one, it is going to destroy the other.”

For more on the Taliban and the drug trade, see “Opium and the Taliban.”

10/28/16

Fluctuations in the Heroin Market

© 4designersart | stcokfresh.com

© 4designersart | stcokfresh.com

The 2016 World Drug Report (2016 WDR) is a good-news bad-news source of information on global opiate statistics. The good news is that global opium production fell by 38% in 2015. The decrease was primarily the result of a decline in opium production in Afghanistan, which fell 48% compared to 2014. This was mainly because of poor yields in the country’s southern provinces. Despite this, Afghanistan was still the world’s largest opium producer, accounting for 70% of global opium production.

The bad news is that despite the drop in production, the global number of opiate users has remained relatively stable. And opium production in Latin America, mostly in Mexico, Columbia and Guatemala, more than doubled from 1998-2014. Central and South American production accounts for 11% of the estimated global opium production. Also, in North America, heroin use and heroin-related deaths have continued to rise. In both cases, the increases were roughly three times the 1999 levels. See the following chart from the 2016 WDR.

heroin-deathsIn 2014, the largest seizures of opiates were in South-West Asia, with Europe next in line. The Islamic Republic of Iran reported the largest opiate seizures worldwide, accounting for 75% of global opium seizures and 17% of global heroin seizures. The next largest heroin seizures were from Turkey (16% of global heroin seizures), China (12%), Pakistan (9%), Kenya (7%), the U.S. (7%), Afghanistan (5%), and the Russian Federation (3%). Iran is the first stop on the so-called “Balkan route” of opiate distribution. From there the route travels into Turkey, and onto South-Eastern Europe, where it is distributed throughout Western and Central Europe. “Seizure data suggest that the Balkan route, which accounts for almost half of all heroin and morphine seizures worldwide, continues to be the world’s most important opiate trafficking route.”

The massive decline in opium production of almost 40 per cent in 2015 is unlikely, however, to result in a decline of the same magnitude within a year in either the global number of opiate users or the average per capita consumption of opiates. It seems more likely that inventories of opiates, built up in previous years, will be used to guarantee the manufacture of heroin (some 450 tons of heroin per year would be needed to cater for annual consumption) and that only a period of sustained decline in opium production could have any real effect on the global heroin market.

In 2015 Bloomberg published an article with three maps of global drug smuggling routes. The major opiate producers are: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Laos, Mexico and Columbia. The opiate map illustrates the vast reach of the so-called Balkan route. The Americas are primarily supplied with opiates grown in Mexico and Columbia. More than 70% of all heroin and morphine seizures in the Americas were in the U.S. between 2009 and 2014. Seizures more than doubled from around 2 tons per year from 1998-2008 to 5 tons per year from 2009-2014. Heroin trafficking and use was seen in 2015 as the main national drug-related threat in the US, according to the 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA).

The 2015 NDTA reported that heroin was available in larger quantities, used by larger numbers of people, and caused more overdose deaths than 2007. The increased demand and use of heroin is driven by greater availability and controlled prescription drug (CPD) abusers switching to heroin. Cheaper prices for heroin contribute to the switch as well.

Increases in overdose deaths are driven by several factors. The purity of heroin has increased in some areas. New heroin users switching from prescription opioids are used to the set dosage amounts potency of prescription drugs. Illicitly–manufactured drugs can vary widely in their purity, dosage and adulterants. Over the past few years the use of highly toxic adulterants like fentanyl (20 to 40 times stronger than heroin) in certain markets has also added to the increase in overdose deaths. Then there are heroin users who stopped using for a while (from treatment or incarceration) whose tolerance has decreased because of their abstinence.

Most of the heroin in the US today comes from Mexico and Columbia. Columbian heroin is still the predominant type available in the Eastern US. While Southeast Asian heroin, largely from Afghanistan dominates the global market, very little makes its way to the US. Southeast Asian heroin was the dominant supplier of heroin in the US at one time. But it no longer can compete with the transportation and distribution networks of the Mexican and Columbian drug cartels. Se the following chart from the 2015 NDTA.

heroin-seizuresThe Mississippi River has been a dividing line in the US heroin market for the past 30 years, with Mexican black tar and brown powder heroin west of the Mississippi and white powder heroin from South America in the East. There is increasing evidence that Mexican drug cartels are processing their own white powder heroin and mixing white heroin with Mexican brown powder heroin to create a more appealing product to the Eastern US markets. See charts 12 and 13 in the 2015 NDTA for further information on the availability of heroin types purchased in Eastern and Western cities.

The suspected production of white powder heroin in Mexico is important because it indicates that Mexican traffickers are positioning themselves to take even greater control of the US heroin market. It also indicates that Mexican traffickers may rely less on relationships with South American heroin sources-of-supply, primarily in Colombia, in the future. If Mexican TCOs [transnational criminal organizations] can produce their own white powder heroin, there will be no need to purchase white powder heroin from South America to meet demand in the United States. This would also reinforce Mexican TCOs’ poly-drug trafficking model and ensure their domination of all major illicit drug markets (heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana) in the United States.

Mexican TCOs have been increasing their cultivation of opium poppies, to an estimated 17,000 hectares in 2014. This can potentially produce up to 42 metric tons of heroin. Switching to opium cultivation from marijuana cultivation may be at least partly due to the lowered demand for illicit marijuana in the US because of the legalization movement. See “The Economics of Heroin” for more information.

The number of heroin users reporting they used heroin over the past month increased 80% between 2007 and 2012. Of the total number of heroin-related treatment admissions in 2012, 67.4% reported daily use and 70.6% reported their preferred route of use was by injection. Heroin treatment admissions were consistently highest in the New England and Mid-Atlantic states. There are also high rates of repeated treatment among heroin users. Eighty percent of the primary heroin users admitted to treatment in 2012 reported previous treatment; 27% had been in treatment five or more times.

Most opioid users in the 1960s began by using heroin. But that steadily changed until 75% of heroin-users in the early 2000s reported they began by using prescription opioids. The number of people using illicit prescription opioids who switched to heroin was a relatively small percentage of the total number of prescription drug abusers at 3.6%. But it represented 79.5% of new heroin users. Heroin use was 19 times higher among individuals who had previously used pain relievers non-medically.

The reformulation of OxyContin in 2011 is seen as helping to curb the abuse of the drug. In 2011 emergency department visits involving oxycodone declined for the first time since 2004. Overdose deaths from opioid analgesics also began to decrease in 2011. But remember, CPD abusers have been switching to heroin and seem to be contributing to the dramatic increase in overdose deaths from heroin.

The number of heroin overdose deaths increased 244% between 2007 and 2013. Keep in mind that heroin deaths are undercounted. This occurs because of the differences in state reporting procedures for reporting drug-related deaths; and because heroin metabolizes very quickly into morphine. A metabolite unique to heroin, 6-monoaceytlmorphine (6-MAM), quickly metabolizes into morphine erasing the biochemical evidence for heroin use. So many heroin deaths get reported as morphine-related deaths. So what does the future hold for heroin use in the US? The 2015 NDTA concluded the current outlook for the near future is more of the same.

Heroin use and overdose deaths are likely to continue to increase in the near term. Mexican traffickers are making a concerted effort to increase heroin availability in the US market. The drug’s increased availability and relatively low cost make it attractive to the large number of opioid abusers (both prescription opioid and heroin) in the United States.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) publishes a yearly report giving a global overview of the supply and demand of various drugs and their impact on health.

09/9/16

The Dragon Threat

© Linda Bucklin | 123rf.com

© Linda Bucklin | 123rf.com

The DEA released its updated “National Heroin Threat Assessment Summary” on June 27, 2016 and the news is not good. Chuck Rosenberg of the DEA called the death and destruction from heroin and opioids “unprecedented and horrific.” The number of users, treatment admissions, overdose deaths, seizures from heroin traffickers all increased since the 2015 Summary. The increased demand and use of heroin is being driven by greater availability of heroin in the U.S. and prescription opioid users switching to heroin because it’s cheaper. “The problem is enormous and growing, and all of our citizens need to wake up to these facts.”

There were three big takeaways in the 2016 Summary: 1) the number of people currently using heroin almost tripled between 2007 and 2014. 2) Deaths due to heroin more than tripled between 2010 and 2014. 3) Deaths due to synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, increased 79% between 2013 and 2014. You can access a pdf of the full report here.

In 2014, 10,574 American died from heroin-related overdoses. Geographic areas of the country particularly hard hit are in the Northeast and the Midwest. See Map 2 in the 2016 DEA Summary. Not surprisingly, availability levels are the highest in these areas as well. Possible reasons for the increase in overdoses and deaths include: more heroin users, especially those who are new to heroin, who are young and inexperienced; the higher purity of heroin found in certain areas and the use of adulterants like fentanyl.

Twenty to thirty years ago, the average retail-level purity of heroin available in the U.S. was about 10%. By 1999, the average purity was 40%. While the purity increased, the price decreased. The average price per gram in 1981 was $3,260 in 2012 US dollars. By 1999, the price for a gram of heroin had dropped to $622. Heroin prices have remained low since then. With an increase in purity, heroin can be snorted or smoked, which broadens its appeal. “Many people who would never consider injecting a drug were introduced to heroin by inhalation.”

Beginning in late 2013, several states started reporting overdose death due to fentanyl and acetyl-fentanyl. There were 5,544 reported synthetic-opioid-related deaths in 2014. But the DEA speculated it was much higher because of a lack of standardization in reporting; and because coroners and state crime labs don’t initially test for fentanyl or its analogs unless they have a reason to do so. The eastern U.S. is the area most effected by this, because white powder heroin from South America predominates. Fentanyl, also a white powder, is mixed with heroin or sold disguised as white powder heroin. The following chart is from the 2016 DEA Summary.

Heroin deathsThe Mississippi River has historically been a geographic dividing line with Mexican, “black tar” and brown powder heroin more common west of the Mississippi and white powder heroin, now supplied from South America, common east of the Mississippi. But that is changing. Mexican traffickers are making inroads into major eastern cities. Mexican organizations are now the most prominent wholesale-level traffickers of heroin in Chicago, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. Increased trafficking of Mexican heroin means more heroin is entering the U.S. across the Southwest border from Mexico. Black tar heroin is popping up more frequently in the Northeast, although it still comprises a small percentage of the heroin seized.

Mexican traffickers have taken a larger role in the U.S. heroin market, increasing their heroin production and pushing into eastern U.S. markets that for the past two decades were supplied by Colombian traffickers. This is notable because Mexican traffickers control established transportation and distribution infrastructures that allow them to reliably supply markets throughout the United States

The DEA also noted the increase in counterfeit prescription pills, many which contain deadly amounts of fentanyl. Small-scale local drug entrepreneurs can buy the materials and equipment to produce the counterfeit drugs online and set up their own operation, ala Breaking Bad. “Fentanyl pill press operations have been identified in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, indicating a vast expansion of the traditional illicit fentanyl market.” Oxycodone and other opioid painkillers are the main counterfeited medications, but traffickers are also packaging fentanyl as Xanax and other benzodiazepines. See “Buyer Beware Drugs” for more information.

When comparing heroin use to other drugs in the U.S., we find that the population of heroin users is slightly smaller than the estimated population of methamphetamine users and significantly smaller than individuals reporting current cocaine use. However, the number of individuals reporting current use of prescription pain relievers non-medically was about TEN TIMES the size of heroin users. So although a rather small percentage of prescription drug abusers (4%) will try heroin, this represents a significant increase in the number of heroin users because the size of the prescription drug abuse population is so much larger. See the following chart taken from the 2016 DEA Summary.

chart 7Behind all these statistics are real people, some living and some now dead. And despite all the law enforcement efforts over the past several decades, the problem seems to be getting worse. So two federal law enforcement agencies decided to combine their efforts and try a different tactic. They thought they’d try to address the problem from the demand side instead of the supply side.

Back in February the FBI and DEA released a documentary film addressing the growing epidemic of prescription drug and heroin abuse. “Chasing the Dragon: The Life of an Opiate Addict” is intended as an educational film for high school and above. Educational materials have had mixed effectiveness with decreasing drug usage. But the value of this film is in its portrayal of the real people who chased the dragon and became part of the above statistics. You can watch the film here.