Weird headline. The US was trafficking heroin.

idk if the article mentions it but Afghanistan has often had a horrible opiate problem. The Taliban crackdown on poppy cultivation is one of a very, very small number of "I guess I have to give it to them in this one very specific instance".

And as near as I can tell there's nothing cynical about this. The Taliban wants to stop local opioid production because of the horrific harm it does to Afghanis.