Illegal drugs is always a hot-button issue. And also a chicken-and-egg equation: Do you fight drug use by going after the consumer or the supplier? In most of the developed countries, with the exception of the United States, which is one of the largest consumers of illegal drugs, the consumer is not considered a criminal. He belongs in rehab. It’s the supplier that wreaks havoc with the law enforcement agencies, and when caught, is jailed.

Drugs also pay a major role in global politics. Consider the case of Afghanistan, which produces 92 percent of the world’s supply of opium. Growing poppies is the local farmers most lucrative business. And the Taliban, most of whom do not consume drugs themselves, earn an estimated $160 million a year from taxing production and smuggling opium to consumer countries, according to a UN report.

Mexican drug dealers, who supply much of America’s consumer demand, are a constant menace to both Mexican and US officials along the border – using sophisticated high tech weapons which accounts for Mexico’s currently high rate of homicides.

But the Taliban control of drugs, plays into the whole picture of regional security in South Asia. Western nations have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan battling Taliban insurgents but have failed to crack down on the production of opium from locally grown poppies.

According to the report, made by the UN office on drugs and crime, the Taliban’s control of the opium trade has made it possible for them to build up an awesome war machine that is technologically complex. Efforts at interdiction stops only about five percent of the drug traffic across Central Asia.

Most of the heroin and opium, both derivatives of the poppy, devastate users. Heroin overdoses kill more than 10,000 people each year in NATO countries, five times the number of troops that have been killed on duty in Afghanistan. The report suggests that seizing Afghan opium where it is produced would be more efficient that trying to get it in the countries where it is consumed. Thus far, the NATO and US troops in Afghanistan have done little to control the illegal drug trade. There is the option of convincing farmers to plant alternate crops that can provide equal income which has worked successfully in parts of Thailand and Turkey.

But the Taliban drug trade is very well organized and is said to involve some government officials. The drugs go to Iran, Pakistan, and then the European Union countries via Turkey and Russia.The Taliban control the Afghanistan drug trade in six provinces. There have been sporadic attempts by the government and the military to get poppy farmers to grow other crops.

NATO’s mandate is to deal with counter-insurgency, not drugs. But recently, there have been attempts to tackle the drug trade, since it is the Taliban’s primary source of income, funds the insurgency, and is a threat to the country’s very survival. According to a UN official with the drug agency, who was interviewed on TV, Afghanistan is “crying” for more security.