From opium to fentanyl:
a global history
in Toby Seddon (ed.), 2026, Research Handbook on Drugs and Society,
Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 72-84.
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
Geographer and CNRS (Prodig) Research Fellow
Abstract
From the opium poppy to opium, then to opiates such as morphine and codeine, and finally to opioids such as heroin and fentanyl, the trajectory is long historically, geographically, and chemically. From the Neolithic to the twenty-first century, the opium poppy has remained a source of drugs used both medically and recreationally. Radical transformations nevertheless occurred in the nineteenth century, when morphine became the first alkaloid ever isolated and heroin one of the first opioids to be synthesized. This inaugurated a new drug era, initially marked by the extraction and isolation of specific alkaloids such as morphine, and later by the production of semi-synthetic and synthetic opiate-like compounds, or opioids, such as heroin and fentanyl. Yet, despite these pharmacological and industrial transformations, opium production itself has proven remarkably resilient even though it has been largely prohibited for non-medical and non-scientific purposes. This resilience stems in part from the enduring nexus between drug economies and war economies, as illustrated by Afghanistan and Myanmar, the world’s two leading illegal opium-producing countries.
Keywords : Opium, opioids, fentanyl, production, world, history, geography.
Introduction
From the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L.) to opium, to opiates such as morphine and codeine, and to opioids such as heroin and fentanyl, the road is long, historically, geographically, and chemically. Indeed, the history of opium poppy cultivation most likely began with Neolithic farmers along the central and western European Mediterranean coast, where Papaver somniferum probably originated (Salavert, Zazzo, Martin, et al., 2020; Merlin, 1984). During eight millennia (since the middle of the sixth millennium BC (Salavert, Martin, Antolín & Zazzo, 2018)), poppies and opium have been consumed for the combined effect of the more than fifty alkaloids they contain, some of which are analgesic compounds that would end up being called opiates.
A radical transformation occurred as late as the nineteenth century, when morphine, the opium poppy’s principal and most renowned opiate, became the first alkaloid ever isolated (1803–1805), and heroin the first opioid to be synthesized (1874). This chemical feat inaugurated a new drug era, first with the extraction of morphine as a singled-out alkaloid that could be used in and for itself, separately from the poppy’s many other alkaloids; then with the production of semi-synthetic and synthetic opiate-like alkaloids: opioids. The innovative but still chemically limited opiate era quickly opened the way to the almost limitless opioid era, with the creation of numerous chemical compounds of various uses and increased potencies, and with its many benefits (medicine) and harms (addiction) to individual and public health.
While the production and use of opium, morphine, and heroin depend on the cultivation of the opium poppy, with synthetic opioids that agricultural and spatial dimension is no longer binding as chemical compounds such as fentanyl can be produced entirely chemically. Synthetic opioids have made it possible to ignore the vagaries (social, economic, political, biophysical contexts) that have marked the long history of opium production.
Although the production of opium and concentrate of poppy straw[1] is unlikely to disappear any time soon, whether in Afghanistan (illegal production of opium) or in France (legal production of concentrate of poppy straw), the fact that a fentanyl epidemic now likens to past opium, morphine, and heroin epidemics is testimony to a change of era. That change also means that, while opium bans and forced eradication have failed to stop or even durably stymie illegal opium production anywhere in the world (see the 2001 opium ban in Afghanistan), the production of synthetic opioids renders the drug supply focus of the century-old international drug control regime and its subsequent decades-old “war on drugs” more hopeless than ever in its goal to address drug abuse.
This chapter offers a brief overview of the global history and geography of opium and opioids. It covers the long road from opium to heroin, fentanyl, and tramadol, from Afghanistan to Europe (heroin), from China and Mexico to the United States of America (fentanyl), from India and China to Western, Central, and Northern Africa (tramadol), etc. The focus is about opiates and opioids produced, trafficked, and consumed for non-medical purposes and therefore produced almost entirely illegally rather than diverted from legitimate pharmaceutical sources (a lesser phenomenon). While opium poppies and opium are produced legally in about twenty countries for the pharmaceutical industry, the global opium output is almost entirely produced, illegally, in just three to four countries (Afghanistan, Myanmar, Mexico, and India). As for fentanyl-related substances and tramadol respectively consumed in North America and Africa, amongst other new opiate-type substances, they are illegally and mostly produced in another three countries (China, India, Mexico).
The text begins with a short account of the chemical history of opiates and opioids, along with their definitions. It shows how fast things have changed since morphine was isolated, after eight millennia of opium poppy cultivation and consumption of either opium (as mentioned on Sumerian clay tablets from the end of the third millennium BC[2]), poppy-based beverages, or opium tinctures (laudanum, as mentioned by Paracelsus in the sixteenth century). The focus then shifts to the history and geography of opium poppy cultivation and opium production, stretching from the Neolithic to the twenty-first century and from Mediterranean Europe to Asia and North America. It shows how opium production has proven extremely resilient despite many political, economic, and climatic vicissitudes.
Illegal opium production has proven resilient despite a long-lasting international drug control regime (over a century) and despite a five decade-long “war on drugs” (since 1970), notably because of the existence of a nexus between drug economies and war economies, as exemplified by Afghanistan and Myanmar. Yet, such a resilience will be tested now that synthetic opioids can be produced outside of territorial and agricultural constraints. Considering how fast synthetic opioids, among other new synthetic psychoactive substances (including a synthetic substitute to ethanol), have evolved in the most recent past, it is indeed possible, yet unlikely, that most if not all of the world’s future opioids will end up being synthetic and their production freed from spatial and geopolitical constraints.
In any case, Afghanistan and Myanmar are already participating to the illegal synthetic drug market as they have become large producers of the semi-synthetic ephedrine-based drug methamphetamine, since the 1990s in Myanmar (yaba and ice or crystal meth, notably from natural ephedrine[3] sourced from China) and since the mid-2010s in Afghanistan, where three wild species of the Ephedra genus have become a natural source of ephedrine (Chouvy & Meissonnier, 2004: 7-11; UNODC, 2022a; EMCDDA, 2020). The illegal production of methamphetamine has developed considerably in both countries, partly due to economic opportunity and diversification but also due to its advantages over heroin production (Chouvy & Meissonnier, 2004: 9-10). But opium and heroin production remains well entrenched in the war economies of both countries and, if the most recent increase of their areas cultivated is of any significance, opium is unlikely to be replaced by synthetic opioids in the near future.
From opium to opioids
Out of the more than fifty different alkaloids metabolized by the opium poppy and contained by opium, only three are analgesic alkaloids and are called opiates: morphine, codeine, and thebaine. Other alkaloids from opium, such as papaverine and noscapine, are not analgesics (and not, or barely, psychoactive) and are not technically considered opiates, or even drugs[4] for that matter. Strictly speaking, opiates are the naturally occurring analgesic[5] alkaloids from the opium poppy. Morphine, the main[6] alkaloid of opium, is the world’s best-known opiate because of its long history and most notably because of the roles it played as a drug used both legally (as a prescribed medicine) and illegally (for reasons other than medical). Morphine is a precursor to heroin (diacetylmorphine or diamorphine), synthesized in 1874 as the first opioid ever. Opioids are opiate-type analgesics that are at least part synthetic. Heroin, the most famous opioid there is, is a semi-synthetic[7] opioid produced from the acetylation of morphine, generally by using acetic anhydride.
Interestingly, both historically and chemically, the English word opiate dates back from the early sixteenth century (late Middle English) and comes from the Middle French (1336) opiate (Latin opiatus, from Latin opium), which used to refer to electuaries regardless of their containing opium (laudanum was considered an opiate). In English, it first referred to a “medicine containing opium” and it did not designate the opium poppy’s alkaloids before morphine became the first alkaloid ever isolated (1803) and before the term alkaloid was coined in 1831 (1827 in French, after alcalide in 1823). As for opioid, it was only coined in 1957, some eighty years after diacetylmorphine, the world’s first opioid in the strict sense, was synthesized (1874) and marketed as “Heroin” by the pharmaceutical firm Bayer (1898). While scientific terms obviously cannot precede the discoveries they refer to, the time it took for terminology to catch up with chemistry in the case of opiates and opioids is surprising. The road from opium to opioids has been a long one, chemically but also terminologically.
Since heroin, many other opioids have been invented and produced, including oxycodone (from thebaine) in 1932, fentanyl (and its many nonmedical related substances or analogues, such as acetylfentanyl), with 30 to 50 times the potency of heroin, in 1959, and tramadol (from codeine) in 1962. The first fully synthetic opioid, meperidine (Demerol), was produced as late as 1932, sixty years after heroin, the first semi-synthetic opioid, was created, and 130 years after the opiate morphine was isolated. Opiates and opioids are considered euphoriants and are, oddly, referred to as narcotics, that is, etymologically, drugs that dull the senses, sometimes to the extent of relieving pain, and induce sleep. According the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and to the United States law, and rather confusingly, narcotics or narcotic drugs (and simply ‘drugs’) refer to a legal category that includes opiates and opioids but also cannabis, coca, and their derivatives (most notably cocaine, due to its numbing properties).
Opiates and opioids are drugs, that is, psychoactive substances that can be used either medically, as medication or medicine, or recreationally and, in the current global legal context, illegally (not all drugs are used illegally: such is the case of alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, etc.). The production, trade, and consumption of opiates and opioids for non-medical use are illegal under national laws and according to three United Nations international drug control conventions (1961, 1971, 1988). While the vast majority of non-medical opiates and opioids have been produced illegally from opium poppy crops grown (also illegally) in a very limited number of countries (predominantly in Afghanistan, Burma, India, Mexico), in most recent years, the production, trade, and consumption of synthetic opioids have surged in certain parts of the world, unrelated to opium poppy cultivation and historical opiate producers.
Opium-based heroin production and chemically-sourced fentanyl analogues have something in common though, as production and consumption areas tend to not overlap (even though heroin is consumed worldwide, including in producing countries). For example, heroin consumed in Western Europe or the USA is produced, respectively, in Afghanistan and in Mexico. Heroin consumed in East Asia and Australia is largely produced in Myanmar. Fentanyl-related substances consumed in the USA were initially (2013-2019) produced in China and are now produced in Mexico using precursor chemicals imported from China or India (CRS, 2022a; Chao, Lassi, Xiaohan & Sharmla, 2022). Tramadol consumed in West, Central, and Northern Africa is produced in China or India. In the end, the logic behind the global illegal opioid economy is one of international trade structured by a geographic repartition of production, trade, and consumption, which still tends to obey a rather old global division of labour, for reasons that are either areal (illegally cultivated areas in countries with low territorial control) or reticular (illegal trade across poorly controlled international borders) (Chouvy, 2019).
Historical trends of opium production
The history of opiates and opioids is of course inseparable from that of the opium poppy and from the long and complex relationship that human societies have built with the plant itself. Indeed, the poppy has long revealed a strange duality: on the one hand, it can relieve pain and suffering, even bring pleasure, but, on the other hand, it is capable of plunging heavy and/or long-term users into severe addiction. The poppy, which probably originated somewhere between the western Mediterranean and Asia Minor, was part of the trading activity of the earliest migrations between the different peoples of Europe and Asia (Merlin, 1984). However, it is in Asia, where societies have had a long association with psychoactive drugs, that large-scale commercial opium production eventually developed and where the vast majority of today’s legal—and illegal—opium is still produced (Chouvy, 2010).
While opium was mentioned as early as the thirteenth century BCE in Egypt and 987 BCE in China, it seems that it only became an important commercial commodity in sixteenth-century Mughal India, especially after it became highly coveted by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British (Latimer & Goldberg, 1981; Booth, 1998). In the southernmost parts of Europe, where some of the oldest archaeological evidence of the opium poppy has been found, the use of opium declined after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century CE, after Romans learned about opium from the Greeks, who knew about it from the Egyptians. Opium reappeared much later in Europe, with the returning Crusaders (in the late thirteenth century), thus underlining the role of the Arabs in the geographical spread of opium, including to India from the seventh century onward (Merlin, 1984; Husain & Sharma, 1983).
The opium trade took on new global dimensions only after the European maritime powers developed and initiated a modern era of globalisation, as a result of their post-1492 expeditions. The interpenetration and interdependence of the world’s markets were to inaugurate new dynamics and to lay down the conditions for the modern global drug trade. After having made the European colonies in Asia viable, and even profitable, opium spread on a global scale. It accompanied Chinese immigrant workers to the Americas in the nineteenth century, subsidized Japanese expansionist policies in septentrional China (Manchuria) in the early twentieth century, enriched many modern drug traffickers, and, last but not least, played a significant role in various war economies throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (Meyer & Parssinen, 1998; Trocki, 1999; McCoy, 2003; Chouvy, 2010).
In the end, the history of large-scale opium production can be divided into three eras that correspond to three production areas. Firstly, with the development of opium production in India after the sixteenth century under Mughal and British rules, then with China’s massive production in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and finally with the surge of illegal opium production in Southeast and Southwest Asia (centered around Burma/Myanmar and Afghanistan) after the 1950s and even more so after 1970.
Opium had long been produced in Asia, most notably by the Mughal rulers of India, who had established an opium monopoly by the end of the sixteenth century. Modern large scale opium trading was made possible after the British East India Company was given trading rights by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (reigned 1605–27) in 1617, and after the Company gained a monopoly in opium trading in Bengal in 1773. Fearing that payment for Chinese imported goods (tea consumption was growing fast in Britain when only China produced the leaves) would deplete their silver reserves, the British resorted to opium from their Indian colony as a means of payment: “A triangle traffic developed in which opium smuggling yielded the silver later used to buy tea legally, which was then shipped to London” (Meyer and Parssinen, 1998: 9). In the mid-nineteenth century, Britain eventually imposed its trade in Indian opium upon China through two so-called Opium Wars (1839–42 and 1856–60). The treaty of Nanjing (1842), which ended the first war, gave Hong Kong to the British, under whose rule it would go on to become the world’s main heroin hub in the twentieth century. As for the Treaty of Tianjin (1858), which ended the first phase of the Second Opium War and legalised the opium trade, it led eventually to the massive development of China’s opium production. Indeed, China had no choice but to promote an import substitution programme in order to address the deficit in its balance of payments with British India. Therefore, China, already the biggest opium-consuming country ever, became the world-leading producer as well (35,364 metric tonnes in 1906 or 85 per cent of world production). Despite Chinese efforts to stem local opium production (such as the 1906 national anti-opium campaign by the Qing government), illegal opium production would not end in China before 1960, as a result of the opium ban issued by the newly Communist regime (1949).
Modern large-scale illegal opium production only developed in Asia after the Second World War disrupted traditional and legal opium supplies to Western colonies. But decolonization and subsequent communist upheavals also played a significant role by reshuffling Asia’s geopolitical map through numerous protracted armed conflicts (Chouvy, 2010). From the end of World War II on, illegal opium production evolved in the multiple and complex contexts of often-counterproductive national and international drug control regimes (Chouvy, 2013); a particularly disruptive and long-lasting US-led “war on drugs”; synergies between war economies and drug economies (during independence wars, the Cold War, civil and other internecine wars, and the post-2001 so-called war on terror); and the ensuing criminalization of peace economies where and when peace was achieved (Chouvy, 2010; McCoy, 2004).
As a result, about fifty countries illegally produced opium throughout the world at the turn of the twenty-first century. Illegal production reached an all-time high in 2017 (at least 10,500 tonnes produced from a minimum of 400,000 hectares of poppy cultivation), mostly, it must be stressed, because of the unabated growth and unrivalled dominance of production in war-torn Afghanistan (Chouvy, 2010; INCB, 2012; UNODC, 2022b). Indeed, wars and the opium economy have long helped sustain one another in Afghanistan, which explains why large-scale commercial opium production in that country is rather recent: small quantities had been exported from Afghanistan since the late nineteenth century, but there was no large illegal production there before the 1970s.
Afghanistan reportedly became the world’s most important illegal opium producer in 1991 when it surpassed Myanmar (known as Burma until 1989). The country has since largely confirmed its supremacy, going from an estimated production of 1,980 tonnes of opium in 1991 to 8,200 tonnes in 2007 and to a record-high 9,000 tonnes in 2017 (down to 6,800 tonnes in 2021) (UNODC, 2022b). In 2022, after the second Taliban takeover (August 2021, after their first takeover in 1996) and their new April 2022 opium ban (after that of July 2000, before their fall from power in November 2001), opium prices at the farm gate tripled (up to prices comparable to those of 2017). Poppy cultivation consequently increased by 30%, indicating that higher records are always possible (although only 6,200 tonnes were produced that year due to decreasing yields caused by a drought) (UNODC, 2022c). Yet, as had already happened after the first Taliban opium ban and its consecutive large production increase[8], opium poppy cultivation experienced an unprecedented drop in 2023, due to the Taliban efforts to deter planting and destroy standing crops throughout most of the country. The 2023 fall in production is truly unprecedented as farmers in Helmand Province, where more than half of the country’s opium is sourced, reduced poppy cultivation by more than 99% compared to 2022. The reduction in production nationwide is just as impressive, with more than an 80% decrease in opium production compared to 2022 (Mansfield, 2023). It is of course impossible to know, as of 2026, what the future will hold, and whether Afghanistan will continue to be a major opium producer or not, depending on political and social uncertainties and, in particular, the durability of Taliban rule. There is a high possibility that new records could be broken if the opium ban is not renewed.
The possibility of new records is demonstrated by Myanmar where political events have also had a direct impact upon the levels of opium production. With 550 tonnes of opium produced in 2017 and 420 tonnes in 2021, Myanmar has long fallen very far behind Afghanistan but most likely remains the world’s second illegal producer, just ahead of Mexico (and/or India (Chouvy, 2014)[9]) and far ahead of Laos (UNODC, 2022b; UNODC, 2022d). However, opium production in Myanmar almost doubled in 2022, reaching an estimated 790 tonnes, after the 2021 coup d’état dramatically affected the country’s conflict and economic situation and pushed many back to poppy fields (a 33 per cent cultivation increase) (UNODC, 2023).
National and global opium outputs and country ratios can obviously vary very quickly, on a yearly basis, due to political, economic, or natural factors such as war, price mechanisms (price of opium, of course, but also of wheat), and drought. For instance, in 2017, Afghanistan, whose production doubled between 2016 and 2017, produced more opium (9,000 tonnes) than the entire world in 2016 (6,380 tonnes). But, more recently, in 2022, Afghanistan produced slightly less opium (6,200 tonnes) than the world in 2016 and its production fell dramatically and unexpectedly in 2023 (- 80 per cent). In the end, what matters the most is not yearly outputs taken independently, historically or geographically, but production trends. Beyond the sensational ups and downs of opium production, what trends show is that global illegal opium output increased at least tenfold between 1970 and 2017-2022 (from 1,066 tonnes up to at least 10,500 tonnes), and that the dominance of Burma/Myanmar and then Afghanistan has remained unchallenged since the 1980s (UNODC, 2017a; UNODC, 2017b; McCoy, 1991: 495; UNODCCP, 2001: 60).
Yet, while the vast majority of the world’s opium is produced illegally in Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Mexico and/or India, nineteen countries legally grow opium poppies under strict state control for the pharmaceutical industry. But Afghanistan and Myanmar are not part of these countries. (Mansfield, 2001; INCB, 2012; UNODC, 2017b) Afghanistan, for example, was a legal opium producer in the first half of the twentieth century and had even “emerged as one of the more consistent sources of raw pharmaceutical opium” during World War II before it lost its right to legally produce and export opium in the 1950s (Bradford, 2015: 57, 224; Chouvy, 2014; INCB, 2017: 23). In contrast, India has long been the world’s largest legal opium producer and only legal raw opium exporter. This is partly due to the country’s long, rich opium history. The opium poppy has been cultivated there since at least the tenth century and opium production developed throughout the northern part of the country in the sixteenth century under the Mughals. Three countries other than India (the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and Japan) legally produce opium, although only for their own domestic markets and in much smaller quantities than India.
Depending on stocks, the predominantly Indian legal annual opium production fluctuates even more than illegal production. Global legal output diminished from over 1,700 tonnes in 2000 to a historic low of 42.2 tonnes in 2016 and 315 tonnes in 2021 (INCB, 2017: 23)[10]. Other than India, all legal opioids producers-exporters (not all producers are exporters), including Australia, France, Spain, and Turkey (the four other main opioids producers during the last two decades), extract morphine and other alkaloids directly from concentrate of poppy straw, that is, from the plant itself, not from opium. In 2020, legal global production of morphine-rich opiate raw material totalled about 380 tonnes in morphine equivalent (down from 586 tonnes in 2015), produced out of 60,000 hectares of poppy cultivation (Chouvy, 2010; INCB, 2017: 25; INCB, 2022: 120, 124). This compares to the estimated 448 tonnes of heroin (expressed at export purity) that were reportedly produced illegally around the world in 2016 (no estimates for 2021 or 2022 as reports are not consistent) out of about 6,380 tonnes of illegal opium production (out of which 2,100 tonnes were reportedly consumed as opium) (UNODC, 2017a: 14).
Opium, war, and poverty
While the 10500 tonnes of opium produced in 2017 constitute the absolute record for global illegal production, they remain far below the historic world record of 1906 (42,000 tonnes: for the most part, 35,364 tonnes reportedly produced in China and 5,177 tonnes in British India) when Charles Henry Brent, the first Protestant Episcopal Church Bishop of the Philippines and a staunch opponent of the then booming opium trade,wrote to President Theodore Roosevelt asking for the United States to call for an international conference to enforce anti-opium measures in China (Chouvy, 2010). However, global illegal production is now much higher than it was in 1970, at the onset of the US-led global “war on drugs”. Indeed, following the multilateral efforts of the League of Nations (1919–46), then of the United Nations (1945-), and after the Communist government in Beijing succeeded in eliminating opium production in China between 1949 and 1959, global illegal opium output had plunged to a low-point in 1970 (reportedly, 1,066 tonnes) (McCoy, 1991: 495). Oddly, 1970 was not only the year a global “war on drugs” was declared by Richard Nixon’s administration, but also when the “Golden Triangle” expression was coined by a US official to refer to the tri-border (Burma, Laos, Thailand) and mountainous area of mainland Southeast Asia where illegal opium production developed after the Second World War.
This contraction of global production before 1970 proved ephemeral since it was mostly due to the rapid suppression of large-scale Chinese production (after the Communist revolution) and of smaller Indian production—and not to an efficient international drug control regime. Major shifts in production occurred over the following twenty years. In fact, many argue that the highly repressive global “war on drugs” launched in 1970 proved not only ineffective but also counterproductive. This is what historian Richard Davenport-Hines, notably, details in his social history of drugs when he explains how “presidential Drug Wars” have exacerbated the world’s drug problems through “intolerable nonsense.” He declares that “Richard Nixon … was the first man in the White House to have direct, calamitous influence on drug policy” and how “Ronald Reagan … surpassed Nixon as a wrong-headed drugs warrior.” (Davenport-Hines, 2001: 382, 338, 351).
Likewise, Alfred McCoy, the historian of the “politics of heroin” in Asia, stresses the failure of the international drug control regime and its repressive policies: “there is ample evidence to indicate that the illicit drug market is a complex global system, both sensitive and resilient, that quickly transforms suppression into stimulus.” (McCoy, 2004: 96). Indeed, reduction and, ultimately, suppression of drug supplies in producer countries have been the guiding principles and goal of the international drug control regime and of the ensuing war on drugs (Bewley-Taylor, 2001). However, it is now largely accepted that the war waged on drugs during more than fifty years has in fact accompanied, if not encouraged, the expansion not only of illegal opium poppy cultivation (in Asia as well as Latin America), but also of coca (in South America) and cannabis cultivation (worldwide) (McCoy, 2003; Chouvy, 2010).
What is undeniable is that between 1970 and 1989, illegal global production of opium reportedly increased by 218 per cent to 3,395 tonnes (UNODCCP, 2001: 60) and that a marked change in the relative importance of producing countries took place. In 1989, Burma, whose name had just been changed to Myanmar by the ruling junta and whose many and complex internal conflicts had spurred opium production, was still the world’s first illegal producer of opium. In fact, it was producing more opium than the entire world in 1970, with 1,544 tonnes or 45 per cent of the global illegal output. But a challenger for world supremacy emerged to the west of the Himalayas. Afghanistan’s opium output had increased 800 per cent in 30 years (from 130 tonnes in 1970 to 1,200 tonnes in 1989) and represented 35 per cent of the world total. In 1989, Afghanistan was also producing more opium than the entire world in 1970. At the close of the 1980s then, Afghanistan and Myanmar supplied 96 per cent of the world’s illegal opium – a percentage that has remained virtually unchanged (Chouvy, 2010). Indeed, despite increased international and national antidrug efforts, and despite a much better understanding of the dynamics of the global illegal drug markets and of the shortcomings of antidrug policies and programmes, not much has changed since 1989 as global illegal opium production has kept increasing. What have changed, especially since the mid- and late 1990s, are the relative sizes and breakdowns of production figures.
Of course, the reasons for the global failure of the international community to suppress or reduce illegal opium poppy cultivation worldwide are many and complex, rooted in the long history and politics of Asia and of the poppy. Firstly, opium production has clearly benefited from the turmoil of Asian history and geopolitics. The nineteenth-century Opium Wars, the twentieth-century Cold War and its many local conflicts waged by proxy in Burma, Laos, and Afghanistan, and even the twenty-first-century War on Terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan have spurred the continent’s illegal opium production. Illegal drug economies and war economies share a long common history and have shared many territories in Asia and elsewhere (Chouvy, 2010).
Yet, illegal opium production has not benefited only from synergies between war economies and drug economies. It has also thrived on economic underdevelopment and poverty, whether war-induced or not: it is now widely acknowledged that the vast majority of Asian opium farmers grow poppies in order to cope with poverty and, above all, food insecurity. In fact, as shown by history and geography, illegal opium production never thrives better than when war and poverty overlap, as in Afghanistan and Myanmar. Part of the problem, in both Afghanistan and Myanmar, is that illegal opium production largely outlives war. Obviously, building peace is a difficult task and peace is hard to obtain and sustain, but war often transformed political and economic realities and dynamics to such an extent that time is needed for war-torn countries to achieve transition from war economies to peace economies. To bring an end to illegal opium production has proven as difficult as – if not more than –ending wars – and maybe poverty – in the countries where poppies are illegally grown. In predominantly rural countries such as Afghanistan and Myanmar, whose conflicts have lasted for decades and are still (as of 2026) stalling economic growth and development, it seems that the suppression of illegal opium production can only follow – and proceed from – the establishment of peace and the initial reconstruction of the state and of the economy.
The twenty-first century: record-high opium production and rise of synthetic opioids
In that context, in the twenty-first century, opium poppy cultivation remains the source of the overwhelming majority of legally and illegally produced opiates and opioids in the world. As we have seen, illegal opium production has reached its record high in 2017 and Afghanistan and Myanmar, the world’s two main sources of illegally produced opium, have seen their areas cultivated in poppies increase between 2021 and 2022 because of their still worsening political and economic situations. Since then, Afghanistan’s opium ban has made its economy far worse, while Myanmar has maintained its production in the context of ongoing armed conflict. But the new century has not only witnessed an increase in opium production; it has also seen the rise of a North American epidemic of synthetic opioids produced in China, India, and, most recently, Mexico. While synthetic opioids have long been available to both the legal and illegal markets and have never been close to replacing opiates (morphine, etc.) or semi-synthetic opioids (heroin, etc.), in the mid-2010s their production and their consumption have reached unprecedented heights and have caused an overdose epidemic in the US and Canada. In the US, the sharp rise in the consumption of heroin that had been adulterated or replaced with fentanyl resulted in a significant increase in the total number of overdose deaths involving substances classified as heroin between 2010 and 2017. However, overdose deaths attributed to heroin (which may have been adulterated with fentanyl) began to decline amid a steady increase in overall overdose deaths (from stimulants with or without opioids, prescription opioids, etc) (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2023).
Despite the fact that the “opioid epidemic” of fentanyl and analogues appears to be driven by supplier decisions rather than user demand (Pardo et al., 2020), contrary to what has always been the case with morphine and heroin, the question has been raised as to what might happen to countries such as Afghanistan and Myanmar if demand for their opiates dropped off abruptly and permanently (Humphreys, Caulkins, Felbab-Brown, 2018). While that question is far from being new, as it was always implied by each opium ban (as is again the case in Afghanistan in 2023) and forced eradication campaign since the early 1970s (Chouvy, 2010), the real question is more that of the potential of synthetic opioids to make opium production a thing of the past, both chemically and economically (also, Afghan natural ephedrine has become very profitable despite the fact that ephedrine can be produced entirely synthetically).
Answering that question is impossible of course, as there is “no reliable way to project heroin’s displacement over time or geography” (Greenfield, Pardo, Taylor, 2021). Overall, it is very much possible, if not likely, that heroin will account for a declining share of illegally produced opioids, if only because of the room for chemical creativity and improvement that undoubtedly exists. After all, the opioids era is still very recent and new fentanyl analogues and other synthetic opioids are created each year. Yet it is unlikely, “given that local preferences and conditions in markets in some parts of the world may not facilitate” (Reuter, Pardo, Taylor, 2021) the emergence of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, that heroin will be completely replaced by synthetic opioids. In any case, as shown by the case of Mexico, which produces both heroin and fentanyl for the US market, the impact of fentanyl production on opium production is difficult to assess and understand. While some independent sources declare that the surge of fentanyl consumption in the USA has seriously compromised the profitability of the Mexican opium economy (Le Cour Grandmaison, Morris, Smith, 2019), both United Nations and US sources report that opium poppy cultivation remains a viable if not profitable activity in the country. Cultivated areas have reportedly increased threefold (UNODC, 2022e) or even fourfold (CRS, 2022b) between 2012 (10,000 ha (CRS, 2022b)) and 2017 (30,000 (UNODC, 2022e) or 40,000 ha (CRS, 2022b)), before falling to 24,000 ha in 2020 and rebounding to 28,000 ha in 2021 (CRS, 2022b: see figure 5). Overall, considering the most recent decrease in overdose deaths attributed to heroin and fentanyl-laced heroin in the USA (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2023), on the one hand, and the increase of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Mexico between 2021 and 2022, on the other hand, the time of a global takeover by synthetic opioids seems far or even unlikely.
Conclusion
It is impossible to know, of course, what the future holds; in part because we do not have enough perspective on recent events and because the history of opium production and opioid consumption is best analysed in terms of long trends, not short assessments. Compared to the multi-millennial history of the relations between humans and the opium poppy, the modern era of isolated alkaloids is extremely short. That of the synthetic opioids is even shorter. Still, in both historical and geographical terms, the fentanyl epidemic has been very limited and it is impossible at this stage to predict whether things will get better or worse and to what extent. Therefore, whether or not synthetic opioids will render opium production unprofitable for farmers (in any case, the “opium poppy is not necessarily a profitable crop in all circumstances” (Mansfield, 2002), or unnecessary for patients (fentanyl is not a treatment substitute for either morphine or diacetylmorphine) and consumers alike (heroin largely remains their drug of choice) remains to be seen. However, for some time to come, opium poppy cultivation and opium production are likely to remain part of the economies of countries such as Afghanistan (is the 2023 ban tenable economically, socially, and politically beyond 2026?), Myanmar, and Mexico. Ideally, long-due peace and economic development, and not synthetic opioids, will make the very little profits of rural opium economies a thing of the past in the war- and violence-ridden countries that most produce opium.
[1] Concentrate of poppy straw has been produced since 1927 when János Kabay developed a technique to extract morphine from crushed poppy capsules, without having to resort to latex (opium) extraction. This is the technique most used to produce pharmaceutical opioids, except in India, the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and Japan, where opium is still the source of pharmaceutical opioids.
[2] Often misstated as dating from the fifth millennium BC: see Kritikos, Papadaki, 1967.
[3] Ephedrine can be extracted from various Ephedra species, produced semi-synthetically, or entirely synthetically. Pseudo-ephedrine, found in nasal decongestants, can replace ephedrine.
[4] A drug is a psychoactive or psychotropic substance (Chouvy, 2023).
[5] Analgesics are pain relievers or painkillers of various origins and chemical structures: not all analgesics are opiates or opioids.
[6] 8–19 per cent of the dry weight of opium, or up to 26 per cent when harvested from hybrid cultivars.
[7] Obtained from the chemical alteration of a naturally occurring substance: heroin (opioid) obtained from morphine (opiate), and oxycodone (opioid) from either thebaine or codeine (opiates) for example. Fully synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl and analogues, are manufactured from various and interchangeable synthetic precursors, and by way of different synthesis methods (the original (1959) Paul Janssen method for example).
[8] From 4,600 tonnes in 2000 pre-ban, to 1,600 tonnes in 2001 during the ban, and 4,600 tonnes in 2002 after the fall of the Taliban and the non-renewal of their ban (see Afghanistan opium surveys by UNODC).
[9] No satisfactory estimate of illegal cultivation in India exists, but the country has long been one of the world’s largest illegal opium producers in recent years, along with Mexico.
[10] Quantities provided with a consistency ratio of 70 degrees (70 per cent solid matter and 30 per cent moisture), knowing that fresh opium has a consistency ratio of 55-60 degrees (such as that procured by farmers). Quantities of harvested raw opium are therefore superior to quantities of opium at 70-degree consistency and of opium for export (90 degrees) (Government of India, 2022: 183).
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