for around 90% of the revenue of the Assad regime. Ongoing discussions divide scholars into separate groups either claiming or disclaiming the resemblance between narco-states and failed states. Depending on which properties are assigned to the definition of a failed state, the definition is in accordance with the narco-state. While most narco-states show signs of high rates of corruption, violence and murder, properties that are also assigned to failed states, it is not always clear if violence can be traced back to drug trafficking. Obvious to say is that failed states are not consequently narco-states, but uncertain is whether all narco-states are also failed states. Usage It has been argued that narco-states can be divided into five categories depending on their level of dependence on the narcotics trade and the threat the narcotics trade in said country poses to domestic and international stability. These five categories are (in ascending order): incipient, developing, serious, critical, and advanced. However, recent use of the term narco-state has been questioned by some for being too widely and uncritically applied, particularly following the widespread media attention given to Guinea-Bissau as "the world's first narco-state" in 2008, and should instead refer only to those countries in which the narcotics trade is state-sponsored and constitutes the majority of a country's overall GDP. Examples Afghanistan Afghanistan was very well known for its opium production. As of 2021, Afghanistan's harvest produces more than 90% of illicit heroin globally, and more than 95% of the European supply. Most of the opium were smuggled through Herat and Faizabad. The opium were mostly smuggled to the Golden Crescent countries such as Iran and Pakistan. Opium production and trafficking are known to have funded the Taliban's military activities and insurgency Albania The economy's reliance on drug trade and smuggling has led the country to be declared as Europe's only narco-state. Bolivia The drug trade in Bolivia gained its prominence in 1980s, when the demand for cocaine was booming across the Latin America. Bolivia's most lucrative crop and economic activity in the 1980s was coca, whose leaves were processed clandestinely into cocaine. The country was the second largest grower of coca in the world, supplying approximately fifteen percent of the US cocaine market in the late 1980s. Analysts believed that exports of coca paste and cocaine generated between US$600 million and US$1 billion annually in the 1980s (depending on prices and output). In 1980,