[JackCh]

In early 2001 the Taliban banned the growth of poppies and opium export plummeted to near zero.

>The first American narcotics experts to go to Afghanistan under Taliban rule have concluded that the movement's ban on opium-poppy cultivation appears to have wiped out the world's largest crop in less than a year, officials said today. The American findings confirm earlier reports from the United Nations drug control program that Afghanistan, which supplied about three-quarters of the world's opium and most of the heroin reaching Europe, had ended poppy planting in one season.

>But the eradication of poppies has come at a terrible cost to farming families, and experts say it will not be known until the fall planting season begins whether the Taliban can continue to enforce it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/taliban-s-ban-on-po...

Later that year America invaded and poppy production soon exceeded historic numbers by a significant margin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanista...

Make of this what you will.

[soperj]

Today I learned... thank you!