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Do US pharmaceutical companies source opium from Afghanistan?

Sunday, November 8, 2020
By Jacob Alabab-Moser
NO

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of heroin, but its opium output is not internationally licensed for legal medicinal use. The world's largest producer of thebaine and other poppy extracts used in legal opiates is Tasmania, the island state off Australia's southern coast. The U.S. buys 80% of its morphine from Turkey and India. France, Hungary and Spain are also global producers in the legal trade, supervised under a 1961 U.N. treaty.

A 2020 White House report says "heroin originating from Afghanistan is not a driving force of the U.S. opioid epidemic." Afghan opium trades illegally at much higher prices, but little reaches the Americas. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, most illegal heroin in the U.S. comes from Mexico or Colombia.

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