By one UN estimate, the Taliban raise up to $300-million a year from the drug trade. Retail sales worldwide of Afghan heroin are said by some to be of the order of 200 billion dollars a year, but this number is surely far too high. By one account, consumer expenditure figures for Western Europe could be around $20 billion for heroin, and in the year 2001 ONDCP estimated total US consumer spending on heroin at about $12 billion. In 2005 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated the total value of the global opium and heroin market to be valued at $65 billion, with about 11 million heroin users worldwide. [United Nations, ”2005 World Drug Report,” Office on Drugs and Crime, June 2005, pg. 132.]
Bookmarks