Whitey Bulger: protected by the FBI for decades while being the biggest heroin importer in the northeast

Freeway Ricky Ross: supplied by the CIA with coke from the Contras, in a relationship mediated by a DEA informant

Golden Triangle heroin trade: controlled by the CIA for decades after the Korean War, arming and protecting manufacturers and traffickers, with heroin flown on CIA planes

The French Connection: French gangsters were protected by the CIA and allowed to import heroin to their primary market, the US, in exchange for keeping the port of Marseille out of the control of French communists

La Corporacion: the biggest Bolivian cocaine cartel, the "GM of cocaine", started with the cooperation and protection of the CIA according to a DEA agent whose investigations into them were repeatedly thwarted by the State Dept and CIA

Ronald Stark: the world's biggest manufacturer and supplier of LSD for a period after its criminalization, sole supplier of late-period Brotherhood of Eternal Love, threw parties at the US embassy in Brussels, sent letters using their letterhead, and when he was finally arrested in Italy, the judge in his case accused the CIA of protecting him

the USA has been doing this shit for a long time

I think it comes down to the US being tolerant because winning hearts and minds was more important than destroying Opium. The Taliban has no such qualms.

Worth noting however than this source is questionable and probably shouldn't be used https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/mint-press-news/

Well, what else is there to say? You've gotta hand it to the Taliban.

Selling it, what else.

This one is pretty simple to me: the Americans weren’t putting guns to peoples head and murdering people for drug trafficking on the spot. When the Taliban shows up at your house with guns, and just slaughters your whole family, because they think that you have opium that’s a much stronger deterrent than whatever the Americans were doing.