Global Heroin Supply Is Resilient
The failure of decades of effort by Western countries to suppress the production and trafficking of heroin motivated a five-year study to answer the question: Can the global heroin supply really be cut and with what consequences? The study, funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation and the British and Dutch governments and coauthored by one of the DPRC's founders, included the first systematic analysis of the contemporary world heroin market—its development and structure, its participants, and its socio-economic origins and impact.
A principal lesson from the study is that the heroin industry can change, but change for the worse is often more pronounced and enduring than change for the better. Afghanistan was a minor producer 30 years ago, until the Soviet invasion weakened its central government and the new Khomeini regime cut back on Iran's production. The Taliban's 2001 ban lasted a year, but Afghanistan quickly reclaimed and consolidated its lead, absent that regime's draconian measures. U.S. demand led to the creation of a new heroin industry in Colombia in the early 1990s. The emergence of a large market in Russia prompted a new route for Afghanistan's exports, with serious consequences for states such as Tajikistan, whose economy became heavily dependent on trafficking revenues. These events point to the difficulty of reducing global supply as opposed to merely redistributing production and trafficking.
The study provides a sound, comprehensive empirical base for predicting that there will be little opportunity for global supply reduction in the long term, and explains why production is concentrated in a handful of countries and will likely stay so. The authors conclude with suggestions for exploiting limited policy opportunities, primarily local, that emphasize long-term institution-building, economic development, and international support, without which even local successes may not be possible.
The study also sheds light on a number of more specific characteristics of the world market, including the significance of India as an illicit opium producer, by virtue of large-scale diversion from licit production, and the still-important role of Asian heroin in the United States, notwithstanding official claims to the contrary.
Note: Potential production is the measured area under cultivation multiplied by an assumed productivity.
Data Source: UN Office on Drugs and Crime (formerly UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention)
Source:
The World Heroin Market: Can Supply Be Cut?
Paoli L, Greenfield VA, Reuter P
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