4. The next leg of research focused on the rapidly developing cottage industry in ephedrine production drawing on indepth interviews with cooks & high resolution imagery analysis used to identify & count labs, & monitor developments in key market hubs. emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/p…
5. We then expanded the lab count over a wider area in the SW to include parts of Nimroz & Farah. We found 348 ephedrine labs alone - enough to produce the equivalent of 1,000 MT of meth per year - & calculated the income earned by those involved. l4p.odi.org/resources/war-… 
6. Finally our efforts to better understand developments since Aug ‘21, this includes the dramatic uptick in the stocks of ephedrine in the SW & a significant increase in ephedrine production, as people look to maintain incomes by increasing volume in the face of economic crisis
https://twitter.com/mansfieldintinc/status/1466678470788931592
7. We’ve been privileged to work with @AlexSoderholm & his pioneering work on meth production,trade & use in Iran. We’ve shared results & learned from each others research in real time to inform data collection & analysis on both sides of the border. emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/p…
8. We have also collaborated with the likes of @JasonEligh & his robust & insightful efforts in east Africa comparing & contrasting findings so as to better understand how markets work up & downstream & to identify gaps in knowledge to further explore globalinitiative.net/wp-content/upl…
9. All this points to the need for a more collaborative and iterative way of researching & understanding illicit markets, deploying genuinely mixed methods & not being bound by preexisting conclusions, data collection methods, policy positions or understandings of how things work
10. It also means not ignoring information that you didn’t set out to collect in the 1st place. As recent events in Afghanistan show, what might start off as a bucket of green goo soaking at the back of a lab can soon turn into an industry producing drugs @ a global scale.
11. More on the rapid development of the meth industry in Afghanistan and the methodological journey required to identify and map it can be found here @AlcisGeo alcis.org/amp/afghan-meth
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