A Bull Market in Afghan Opium Production

[Toro]

Good news. It appears that, like other commodities around the world, the price of opium is soaring. That's welcome relief to the hard hit economy of Afghanistan.

With production up 17% over last year, and global market share of 82%, Afghanistan is raking in their largest earner of foreign currency.

Source

Report

 

[eots]

Estimating Heroin
Availability

Our best estimate is that roughly 12 to 13 metric tons of heroin are used in the United States during a given year, and that the level of use has not changed appreciably during the last several years. (The
number of heroin users may have changed, because relatively inexpensive and high purity heroin may have attracted occasional users, but occasional users account for a low proportion of heroin use.)

if we cant keep 12 to 13 metric tons of heroin from getting into the country how could you even conceive of keeping out terrorist ,dirty bombs, anthrax or anything else this can only occur with the complicity of many at the highest levels of government intelligence agency's

 

[xsited1]

I see that Muslims are doing their part to eradicate infidels.

 

[dilloduck]

Estimating Heroin
Availability

Our best estimate is that roughly 12 to 13 metric tons of heroin are used in the United States during a given year, and that the level of use has not changed appreciably during the last several years. (The
number of heroin users may have changed, because relatively inexpensive and high purity heroin may have attracted occasional users, but occasional users account for a low proportion of heroin use.)

if we cant keep 12 to 13 metric tons of heroin from getting into the country how could you even conceive of keeping out terrorist ,dirty bombs, anthrax or anything else this can only occur with the complicity of many at the highest levels of government intelligence agency's

We only want the right traffickers making the bucks if you know what I mean *wink*. Besides--our country needs the bucks right now.

 

[waltky]

Drug addiction a big problem in Afghanistan...

Afghanistan, the drug addiction capital
10 April 2013 - Afghanistan produces 90% of all opiate drugs in the world, but until recently was not a major consumer. Now, out of a population of 35 million, more than a million are addicted to drugs - proportionately the highest figure in the world.

Right in the heart of Kabul, on the stony banks of the Kabul River, drug addicts gather to buy and use heroin. It's a place of misery and degradation. In broad daylight about a dozen men and teenage boys sit huddled in pairs smoking and injecting. Among them are some educated people - a doctor, an engineer and an interpreter. Tariq Sulaiman, from Najat, a local addiction charity, comes here regularly to try to persuade addicts to get treatment. "We are already losing our children to suicide attacks, rocket and bomb attacks," he says. "But now addiction is another sort of terrorism which is killing our countrymen."

At the age of 18, Jawid, originally from Badakhshan in the north of Afghanistan, has already been hooked on heroin for 10 years. His uncle introduced him to drugs when he was a small child, to make him work harder on the land. "I hate my life. Everyone hates me. I should have been at school at this age, but I am a junkie," he says. His father is dead. His disabled mother worries about her son constantly. All she wants from life is for him to get clean, but she begs on the streets to pay for his daily dose to prevent him stealing. "I always tell Jawid if I die, he will end up sleeping under the bridge with other addicts," she says.

This is the fate of the most hardcore addicts, whose fires can be seen at night. Police regularly beat and disperse them, and sometimes throw them in the river. The reasons why so many Afghans are turning to drugs are complex. It's clear that decades of violence have played a part. Many of those who fled during the violence of the last 30 years took refuge in Iran and Pakistan, where addiction rates have long been high. They're now returning and bringing their drug problems with them, officials say.

Unemployment - which currently stands at nearly 40% - is also taking its toll. "If I had a job, I wouldn't be here," says Farooq, one of the addicts by the river, who has a degree in medicine and once worked as a hospital manager. He says he takes drugs "to be calm and to relax" - but that he would prefer to be dead than a junkie, as he now is.

More BBC News - Afghanistan, the drug addiction capital

 

[waltky]

Near record poppy crop in Afghanistan...

Afghan opium production increases for 3rd year in a row, nearing record
Monday, Apr. 15 2013, Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been increasing for a third year in a row and is heading for a record high, the UN said in a report released Monday.

The boom in poppy cultivation is at its most pronounced in the Taliban’s heartland in the south, the report showed, especially in regions where troops of the U.S.-led coalition have been withdrawn or are in the process of departing. The report suggests that whatever international efforts have been made to wean local farmers off the crop, they are having little success. Increased production has been driven by unusually high opium prices, but more cultivation of Afghanistan’s premier cash crop is also an indication that Afghans are turning to illicit markets and crops as the real economy shrinks ahead of the expected withdrawal of foreign combat troops at the end of 2014. Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, the raw ingredient in heroin, and last year provided about 75 per cent of the global crop — a figure that may jump to 90 per cent this year due to increased cultivation.

Crop sales mostly fund local power brokers and criminal gangs in Afghanistan and to a lesser degree the Taliban, Western experts believe. This makes it difficult for the Afghan government to establish control in areas where the economy is driven by black-market opium sales, despite a small but effective counternarcotics force. “As we have predicted, opium will go up for a third year in a row,” said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan, which prepared the report along with the Afghan Counterarcotics Ministry. “We are looking at a record high cultivation.”

The boom in poppy cultivation is at its most pronounced in the Taliban’s heartland in the south, the report showed, especially in regions where troops of the U.S.-led coalition have been withdrawn or are in the process of departing.

The Afghanistan Opium Winter Risk Assessment 2013 issued by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime was conducted in two phases. One from December to January for central, eastern, southern and western Afghanistan, where opium was sown in the fall of 2012, and another in February and March that covered northern and northeastern Afghanistan, where opium is usually planted in the spring. The exact figure for 2013 is still unclear, but the UN said that indications are it will surpass the 154,000 hectares planted in 2012, and the 131,000 in 2011. The report attributed the increase to the high sales price of opium, which has made cultivation attractive to farmers. Although prices were lower than the three previous years they “were still at a higher level than between 2005 and 2009, making opium cultivation very attractive to farmers.” Fear of eradication was the main reason cited by those farmers who decided not to cultivate the crop.

Prices started spiking in 2010, when blight killed much of the crop. They went from about $60 to $85 a kilogram ($130 to $190 a pound) to $300 ($660) in 2011. Although prices this year range from $160 ($350) to $200 ($440), they are still very high. “This price is not explainable,” Lemahieu said. “Demand in the region and globally is even. There is no demand increase to explain this.” Afghan heroin makes its way to regional countries, Europe and Russia. “Afghanistan is to turn into a narco-state unless and until there is a comprehensive strategy that is adopted now,” said UNODC deputy representative A(*)(*)(*)(*)a Mittal. “Time is not on our side.”

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[waltky]

Poppies makin' a comeback as US troops prepare to leave Afghanistan...

As US draws down, Afghan opium production thrives
May 1, 2014 ~ Pink-and-white poppy blooms stretch toward the horizon in this field in southern Afghanistan as laborers slice open the green bulbs swollen with raw opium, the main ingredient in heroin.

The opium from Marjah, a district in southern Helmand province, likely will make its way to drug addicts in the region and the world. Helmand's harvest this year is expected to be one of the largest ever, mirroring trends in the rest of Afghanistan. This year's bumper crop, after the U.S. has spent $7.5 billion trying to eradicate opium in Afghanistan, represents one of the most tangible and visible failures as the American-led military force prepares to withdraw by the end of this year. And with Afghanistan's emerging anti-narcotics forces vastly outnumbered both by Taliban brokers and corrupt officials involved in the trade, the opium trade likely will only grow. "Poppy is like a virus that is already embedded in a sick body," said Ashita Mittal, acting country director for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Kabul. "It is going to impact the whole economy of this country. We do believe that in the absence of the growth of the licit economy, the illicit economy will take over."

Last year, 209,000 hectares (806 square miles) of poppy were planted across Afghanistan, up 36 percent over the year before and producing an estimated 5,500 metric tons (6,062 tons) of opium, according to the U.N. drug agency. By comparison, only a little over 7,000 hectares (27 square miles) of poppy field were eradicated. The 2014 harvest is expected to match or even exceed last year's record. In coming years, opium will grab an even larger share of Afghanistan's already troubled economy, as money from U.S. military contracts and aid work dries up. The U.N. estimates that some 200,000 families in Afghanistan are involved in opium production already and that the country has some 1 million addicts. As a share of Afghanistan's economy, opium looms large: The U.N. estimates the potential gross value of Afghan opiates last year was around $3 billion — equal to 15 percent of the country's gross domestic product.

An Afghan farmer works on a poppy field harvesting opium, the main ingredient in heroin, in the Khogyani district of Jalalabad, Afghanistan. This year's bumper crop represents one of the most tangible and visible failures of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, as the American-led military force prepares to withdraw by the end of this year.

Throughout the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan, it has worked with Afghan forces to try to eradicate opium — a major source of funding for the Taliban insurgency. At first, that meant hacking down and burning fields, though later troops sought to persuade farmers to plant alternative crops. A report to U.S. Congress this week by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said Washington has spent $7.5 billion on the effort. For a few years, opium production dropped, but as the NATO withdrawal looms, more farmers are turning back to poppies.

For Marjah farmer Mohammad Ayub, the choice is easy. Opium poppies are easier to grow than other crops, they are easy to convert into quick cash and far more profitable. He says he can earn 80,000 Afghanis ($7,000) growing poppies for opium on his land, while he can barely break even planting cotton. "Opium has a good income, and that is why people are cultivating it with all its problems," Ayub said. "We are not scared from the government, because most of the officials have their share in the harvesting." In Marjah, the resurgence of opium is particularly striking because the Helmand district was touted in 2009 as a showcase of the U.S. military's "surge" strategy of driving Taliban from the area. At the time, the American coalition flew journalists to newly liberated Marjah to see efforts to convert poppy fields to wheat, grapes and other crops and install a clean, competent local administration, memorably described at the time as a "government in a box."

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[BlackFlag]

Damn whatever happened to [MENTION=3851]eots[/MENTION]?

 

[shart_attack]

Damn whatever happened to [MENTION=3851]eots[/MENTION]?

Rehab is my guess.