Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world’s opium poppy, and an estimated 900 tons of opium and 375 tons of heroin, the world’s most dangerous drug, says the UN’s Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in a report out 21 October. This is feeding a habit that has ensnared 15 million addicts in a trade worth $65 billion yearly. Each year more than five times as many people (10,000) die of heroin overdoses in Nato countries than soldiers have on the battlefield in Afghanistan since the war began eight years ago.

UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa says more effort should be expended on tracing the countervailing “value chain” of money that flows back to nascent and increasingly more powerful drug lords in Afghanistan, many connected to the Taliban. UNODC estimates that the Taliban may be making double the money in taxes on production and trade than they were 10 years ago. The estimates range from $90-160 million per year.

The cost and effort of stopping the flow of drugs out of Afghanistan is immeasurably easier at the source than in the consuming nations of Europe and Russia. Once the drugs reach the countries of southeastern Europe, only an estimated 2-4 percent is caught by drug enforcement officials, whereas Iran intercepts about 20 percent of the drugs moving across its territory. The farther the drugs move from the source, the more it increases in value.

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