The Australian Federal Police has seen a “sharp increase” in Afghan meth coming into the country in the last two years – and international experts believe the floodgates could open as the now-Taliban-controlled country emerges as a big player in the methamphetamine world.

The boom has come after drug traffickers discovered a plant found growing wild in parts of Afghanistan, ephedra, can be used to create ephedrine, a key part of meth, that is usually extracted from over the counter medicines.

A report for the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction said the methamphetamine the AFP had seized from the region is of high purity and on par with the quality seized from Mexico and the Netherlands.

AFP Detective Superintendent Russel Smith warned methamphetamine manufacture in Afghanistan was a “significant emerging threat”.

The use of a plant to manufacture the methamphetamine had not lessened the danger to users.

“It’s cheap and nasty and has such a lasting effect on the individual’s health … it’s nasty all around, I can’t say it any other way,” Det Supt Smith said.

A key focus of the AFP officers stationed in Europe and the Middle East is to glean intelligence about the supply of Afghan meth that is now being found throughout Australia.

Det Supt Smith said it was a “constant battle” to try to stay ahead of crime syndicates drawn to the lucrative Australian drug market.

A complicating factor for the AFP is the return of the brutal Taliban regime which means there are no AFP staff in Afghanistan, but Det Supt Smith revealed they wouldn’t wait for intel to “fall into our lap”.

“If we get a particular field of intelligence that suggests we have less coverage in some regions we have got the flexibility and agility to move people around to try and meet that demand – before it becomes entrenched,” he said.

“As organised crime defines their business of getting what they think might be a better product to sell to the unsuspecting citizens of Australia, then we’ll be all over that.”

The Taliban claim not to be involved in drug production, but is known to tax drug traffickers and could already be earning millions a year from methamphetamine.

Producing the meth in Afghanistan is usually split between anyone who can buy the ephedra from farmers, who harvest and dry it, and then sell it to drug cooks.

He raised the possibility organised crime were working together, like crime syndicates were seen to do in Operation Ironside, with greed fuelled by the higher profits replacing traditional rivalries.

The seizures of Afghan meth have been building throughout 2019 and 2020, with almost 80kg shipped into Australia last year, either directly from Iran and Afghanistan, or indirectly from neighbouring countries.

In 2017 there were no seizures of shipments from the area.

Det Supt Smith said one notable seizure the AFP assisted with was about 150L of methamphetamine concealed in water bottles shipped from Iran.

So far the price of methamphetamine in Australia hadn’t changed, which indicates the high level of drug use, he said.

“For some reason … there is an insatiable appetite in Australia for illicit drug use, and that continues to drive demand for methamphetamine.”

Dr David Mansfield, an expert on Afghanistan’s drug industry, said the impact of a new source of methamphetamine was not yet clear.

“I mean, we’ve possibly got competing elements here now. What’s that mean for crime, serious organised crime, violence … I don’t know,” Dr Mansfield said.

What is also unclear is if the “circuitous” route the drugs were taking to get to Australia was absorbing the costs saved and reducing the profit – “or is it actually as a relatively low cost and that’s more profit for organised crime within Australia?”

The cost to produce Afghan meth was “ cheap, really cheap” at about a tenth of the price of that out of SE Asia and it appeared to be selling “at the same price everywhere”.

Dr Mansfield said Afghan producers had become “adept” at producing methamphetamine from ephedra during the last few years.

He and his colleagues noticed it during field work in Afghanistan in 2018.

“How they realised ephedra was available to be used for this, God only knows,” he said.

Heroin remains the drug of choice for Afghan drug cooks but the ephedra discovery was a “game changer”.

Dr Mansfield said researchers worldwide had been left with a “lack of clarity” about how far the Afghan meth was circulating throughout the world, and its purity, because few tests for its origin were being carried out – except for in Australia.

Jason Eligh is an illicit drug market and policy analyst at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime said Australia was a “wonderful destination for meth”.

Mr Eligh there were many people worldwide who still didn’t take Afghanistan seriously as a meth producer.

“A lot of people are in denial that it is even an issue at all, and that’s concerning.”

There had been high level talks in Europe and the AFP was an agency that was one of the few that were seriously looking at it.

“But there is no grand kind of recognition that this is in fact occurring.”

Border security expert Dr John Coyne said he feared methamphetamine prices in Australia would fall like in Asia, where they have dropped by more than 30 per cent.

“I’m worried by a massive ramping up in production and the dropping wholesale price … you’re getting higher purity and lower wholesale price and that can be an absolute human security tragedy,” Dr Coyne said.

andrew.koubaridis@news.com.au