It’s in the headlines every few days now in Central Asian countries.

February 1 – Uzbekistan’s law enforcement agencies report raiding a laboratory producing synthetic drugs, and seizing narcotics worth more than $800,000. 

February 3 – Uzbek law enforcement announces that their latest counter-narcotics operation has resulted in the seizure of 111 kilograms of illegal drugs.

February 10 – police in Kyrgyzstan’s northern Chuy region seize 1.5 kilograms of hashish and 1 kilogram of marijuana.

February 11 – Kazakhstan’s Committee for National Security (KNB) announces it had uncovered a laboratory in Almaty region that was producing synthetic drugs. More than 15 kilograms of these synthetic drugs were seized and 200 liters of precursor materials.

In the first decade after the five countries of Central Asia became independent in 1991, many of the reports from foreign media were about Central Asia being a major transit route for narcotics coming out of Afghanistan that were for buyers in Russia and Europe.

Thirty years later, drugs are still coming into Central Asia from Afghanistan, but it is no longer just opium and heroin. And now it seems a good portion of these illicit narcotics are being consumed in Central Asia.

Made in Central Asia

Drug-producing laboratories are multiplying, and while there are no precise figures for the number of addicts, it is clear an increasing number of young people in Central Asia are using drugs.

Ashita Mittal, the regional representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Central Asia, said in January 2025 that during the “last several years in just Kazakhstan, law enforcement agencies have uncovered and destroyed 87 laboratories producing synthetic drugs, and in Kyrgyzstan about 11-12.”

Law enforcement agencies in Kazakhstan said earlier in January that they had destroyed 63 laboratories producing illegal narcotics just in 2024.

Tajikistan’s Agency for Narcotics Control said at the end of its Kuknor-2024 counter-narcotics campaign in December 2024 that it had confiscated more than 1 ton of synthetic drugs.

The synthetic drugs most often mentioned in these seizures are mephedrone, a type of amphetamine and stimulant that causes euphoria, and a-PvP, another stimulant.

However, there are many types of synthetic drugs now available in Central Asia. 

Batum Estebesova, director of Kyrgyzstan’s Sotsium drug rehabilitation center, said the variety of synthetic drugs is increasing quickly.

“We can’t keep up with all the new drugs to add them to the list of prohibited substances,” Estebesova said.

UN Office on Drugs and Crime representative Mittal said part of the problem comes from Afghanistan.

Mittal noted in 2023, there was a 95 percent reduction in heroin production in Afghanistan, but at the same time there was an “exponential growth” in the production of methamphetamines crossing into the bordering Central Asian countries – Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

In May 2023, Uzbek border guards noticed some strange marking on several boxes of pomegranate juice coming from Afghanistan. 

Testing showed bottles of juice in those boxes contained methamphetamine. Apparently, the buyers intended to evaporate the liquid and then collect the methamphetamine residue.

In both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, officials have spoken about the use of the internet to sell synthetic drugs.

Alzhan Nurbekov, an official in Kazakhstan’s prosecutor general’s office, said in June 2023 that “any 12-year-old school kid can buy drugs through a Telegram channel and have them delivered quicker than a pizza.”

Strange seizure figures

Afghanistan continues to be a source of what could be termed “traditional” illegal narcotics; cannabis-based and opiates.

In November 2024, Uzbekistan’s Interior Ministry said raids around the country in October netted more than 255 kilograms of illegal drugs – 99 kilograms of marijuana, 67 kilograms of heroin, 63 kilograms of hashish, 15 kilograms of synthetic drugs, and 11.7 kilograms of opium.

Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan report seizures of marijuana and hashish regularly, though the origin of these drugs is not given and some of it might be locally produced.

Interestingly, the countries bordering Afghanistan are reporting lower seizure figures than one would expect.

Uzbekistan has not provided any figures for the total amount of narcotics confiscated in 2024.

In October, Uzbekistan’s State Customs Service said it had seized some 888 kilograms of illegal drugs in the first nine months of 2024.

This does not include drugs confiscated by Uzbekistan State Security Service or Interior Ministry, neither of which, as of mid-February 2025, has posted figures of total narcotics seizures in 2024.

The director of Tajikistan’s Agency for Narcotics Control, Zafar Samad, said at the start of February that 4.381 tons of narcotics were confiscated in 2024, down from the 5.282 tons seized in 2023.

This reported reduction seems at odds with other information.

On November 18, 2024, unknown assailants fired on workers at a gold-mining operation in southern Tajikistan, near the Afghan border.

A Chinese national was killed and five other workers were wounded.

Tajik authorities said it was likely that drug smugglers were responsible.

One report referred to a Tajik Interior Ministry official, speaking under condition of anonymity, saying the gold mine was located in an area that was along the “most profitable route for drugs from Afghanistan-Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan-Georgia and Europe.”

Officials in neighboring Uzbekistan say drugs are being smuggled into the country from Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and Tajik citizens were caught with drugs in Uzbekistan several times in 2024.

Three Tajik citizens were detained in Uzbekistan’s counter-narcotics operations in early 2025 after they brought nearly 11 kilograms of opium into Samarkand region.

It could be that Tajikistan’s counter-narcotics efforts are not very effective.

Stranger still, reported narcotics seizures in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the two Central Asian countries that do not directly border Afghanistan, are higher than in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Kyrgyzstan’s Service for Combating Narcotics reported on January 15, 2025, that more than 15 tons of illegal drugs were seized in Kyrgyzstan in 2024.

Kazakhstan’s Interior Ministry said on January 13 that some 22 tons of illegal narcotics were confiscated in 2024.

Turkmenistan does not release figures on drug seizures and only reports on the annual burning of unspecified amounts of illegal narcotics every December.

Tougher punishment

Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are responding to the growing narcotic problem by passing tougher laws.

Kazakh President Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev signed a law on January 2, 2025, that changes the prison sentence for manufacturing illegal narcotics from 10-15 years, to 15-20 years, and includes the possibility of life imprisonment.

Curiously, the same law reduces the sentences for those convicted of drug dealing. 

Previously, convicted dealers faced five to 10 years in prison. The new law makes that five to eight years.

Also in January, in Kyrgyzstan, Member of Parliament Ernis Aydaraliyev proposed canceling possibility of parole or amnesty for those convicted of producing illegal narcotics.

Only getting worse

It is difficult to obtain even rough figures for the number of drug addicts in individual Central Asian states.

In June 2023, the press service for Kazakhstan’s prosecutor general’s office said it recorded some 18,300 citizens with drug dependencies.

In November 2024, Kazakhstan’s Health Ministry said there were “more than 18,000” registered drug addicts in the country, but added the actual figure could be closer to 200,000. 

The Health Ministry also noted that the average age of drug users in 2017 was 25-30 years old, while now it is increasing among 16-year-olds.

Similarly, in Kyrgyzstan as of May 1, 2024, there were 6,768 people registered as being drug dependent, but officials noted that many people treated for addiction in hospitals were not registered as drug addicts due to hospital confidentiality rules.

Zafar Samad, the head Tajikistan’s Agency for Narcotics Control, said in late July 2024, there were 4,066 registered drug addicts in the country, which he claimed was down from 4,138 registered at the same time in 2023.

There are no figures from officials in Turkmenistan, but a report from March 2020, noted drug use was on the rise after having been largely eliminated after former President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov initially came to power in late 2006.

Similarly, Uzbekistan has not provided any recent figures for drug addicts.

The number in Uzbekistan was going down, from some 21,000 in 2008 to around 8,000 in 2017, to some 5,000 in 2021.

However, that was before the large influx of synthetic narcotics seen lately around Central Asia.

One report from November 2024, noted the drug problem among young people in the capital Tashkent has become bad enough that police are raiding schools.

The growing frequency of reports in local media about illegal narcotics shows Central Asia’s drug problem is becoming worse.

What the governments in these countries can do to combat this problem is less clear.