Iran is planning to start growing legal opium poppies for medicinal use for the first time in decades, after its existing opiate supply was cut off by a Taliban crackdown in Afghanistan.
Iranian manufacturers of morphine and other opioids have relied for years on seizures of illicit Afghan drugs. However, hauls have plunged since the Taliban banned poppy cultivation in 2022, dropping from 750 tonnes in 2021 to around 200 last year, according to government estimates.
As the country's Food and Drug Administration warns that a continued supply shortage could endanger public health, Iran is now aiming to produce enough poppies for its own consumption.
"Legal cultivation is necessary to ensure long-term sustainability," FDA spokesperson Mohammad Hashemi told the Financial Times. "Without legal cultivation or controlled imports, the country may face problems in securing vital medicines such as morphine, codeine and pethidine."
President Masoud Pezeshkian has personally signed off on the health ministry's call for resuming poppy cultivation, officials say.
"Given the difficulties of imports under sanctions, it was decided to rely on regulated domestic production," government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said this month.
The country needs an annual 500 tonnes of opium for medical manufacturing per year, experts say, but sanctions make it difficult to import the drug. Although medicine is technically exempt from US sanctions, Washington's banking restrictions cause delays and disruptions.
"These complications demonstrate the importance of legal domestic cultivation," said Hashemi, adding that Iran will obtain authorisation from the UN's International Narcotics Control Board. The timeline for starting cultivation depends on legal procedures and permitting.
Iran's climate was well suited for poppy cultivation, said Saeed Sefatian, a former director-general at Iran's Drug Control Headquarters (DCHQ) who first worked on a legal cultivation plan more than two decades ago.
"Opium poppies are suitable for Iran as they require relatively little irrigation. Thus, Iran can both meet its domestic needs and, with UN supervision and co-ordination, expand exports," he said. "The world needs morphine."
The Taliban's abolition of poppy farming has caused the opposite problem in neighbouring Pakistan, which has become one of the world's biggest illicit opium producers. The state is now desperately trying to destroy farms that have popped up near the Afghan border, helping fund militant groups.
In Iran, opium production has been outlawed since the 1979 revolution, after which the Islamic republic ended former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's decade-old poppy cultivation programme. Iran soon became a conduit for smuggled narcotics originating in Afghanistan and destined for the Middle East and Europe.
Domestic drug abuse has long been a problem in Iran, which the UN declared the world's largest opium consumer in 2010. Recent data on addiction levels is scarce, but in 2015, government estimates put the number of regular and recreational drug users at 4.4mn.
"On one side, Iran borders Afghanistan, the world's largest drug producer, and on the other side it borders Iraq, where cannabis cultivation is increasing," Sefatian said. "UN statistics show that Captagon -- once mainly produced in Syria -- is now expanding in Iraq. This is a challenge Iran cannot ignore."
The Islamic republic takes a hardline approach to drug trafficking and use. Amnesty International said last year that "more than half of the 850 people" executed in Iran in 2023 had faced drug-related charges in "unfair trials", which it condemned as "a grotesque abuse of power".
Iran seized 90 per cent of the opium confiscated worldwide in 2019, according to the UN. Anti-narcotics police often release footage showing huge drug shipments going up in flames.
Nearly 4,000 law enforcement personnel have been killed fighting drug gangs over the past few decades, while 1,700 gangs were busted in the first 9 months of 2025 alone, according to the DCHQ.
Opium cost about $100 per kilo in Afghanistan before the ban, but climbed to approximately $730 per kilo in the first half of 2024, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Iranian policymakers fear the climbing cost of opioids, coupled with inflation and currency woes, is pushing low-income users to cheaper synthetic drugs, such as methamphetamines. "Iran is mirroring global trends," Sefatian said.