James Bond to Fight Afghan Drug Lords?

The adventures of James Bond are running out of corners of the world to decimate, and soon, 007 may set his sights on the poppy fields of Afghanistan. According to The Guardian, screenwriters working on the 23rd Bond movie recently consulted a member of the British embassy in Kabul to do research about the region. The result of that research isn't known but the speculation is that at least part of Bond's next mission will have something to do with the enormous opiate trade in war-torn Afghanistan. Specifically, the film could focus on Helmand, a southern Afghan province and the source of nearly half of all the world's opium. It's responsible for about $4 billion in the heroin trade every year. How much is that in the pandemic of illegal drug production? All on its own, this one province would be the world's top drug-producing country. Bond has been in Afghanistan before, in The Living Daylights, though that was still a Cold War- related storyline. If the producers use Afghanistan this time around, it would probably have more to do with the drug trade. We'd have to see how that ties in to the loosely connected sphere of villains in the first two Daniel Craig movies, although I think it fits the gadgetless universe of Britain's most famous spy.