In April 2022, the Taliban banned opium cultivation in Afghanistan. Opium production there collapsed by 95%. The world did not become safer. It became more dangerous. Myanmar filled the gap - growing from 420 tons of opium in 2021 to over 1,000 tons in 2025. Myanmar now accounts for nearly half of all global opium supply. And because the Afghan supply dried up, traffickers are increasingly shifting to synthetic opioids - fentanyl, nitazenes - which are far more potent and far more deadly. The Taliban accidentally made the opioid crisis worse.