The Qing drug traffic did not simply involve distribution and consumption of opium, but also production, in the form of poppy cultivation, all of which occurred inside imperial territory. A more balanced examination of the three major categories of both the opium market system and state anti-drug policy afforded by a shift in perspective to prohibition reveals the importance of the role played by the empire's landlocked western frontier regions, which were the empire's domestic production centers, in what has heretofore been considered an essentially coastal problem.

Wasn't the production of opium in Afghanistan under the Taliban one of the reasons for overthrowing the regime?