Could be. But opium is an old crop, and probably available in several strains.
Opium has indeed been around for a very long time, but I should imagine that it too has been bred and crossbred intensively during the twentieth-century for maximum yield. I’m way out of my horticultural depth here but it seems quite unlike, say pot, in that the only objective is to produce as much milky sap as possible. Now, maybe it’s like the apple tree, in that there is very little man can do to change it but maybe, just maybe it has come down to a few varieties that maximize the goo output.
Let us not forget that the article said 90% of the world’s opium is grown in Afghanistan so whatever strain dominates there is the strain in question.
We’ll know just how devastating this turns out to be when the street price of happy dust goes through the roof.