Old Drugs in New America (Opium Wars 2.0)

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Everyone in America is on some sort of pill nowadays but, in the case of opiate addiction it is now hitting epidemic levels. People trust their doctors and doctors trust pharmaceutical companies who in turn profit from selling more drugs.
True, opium is the best for pain management but why make an addictive substance more addictive through a similar manufacturing process as cigarettes?
I often times hear people say, "well my doctor prescribed them to me."
In the case of GMOs, maybe this too, is a similar scheme?

And too many are now on heroin. How the hell did this drug make a come back let alone in suburbia. Along with meth use, heroin is exploding.

Only thing is..... is where does most of the world's heroin come from???

great vid to really really put it all into perspective...
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD3bQWJo8ms"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD3bQWJo8ms[/ame]

 

[waltky]

Afghanistan havin' it's best poppy growin' year yet...

Afghanistan Set Record for Growing Opium in 2014
January 6, 2015 – After thirteen years of occupation by U.S. forces, Afghanistan set a record for growing opium poppies in 2014, according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Heroin is derived from the poppy.

A UNODC report—“Afghanistan Opium Survey 2014”--provides a “detailed picture of the outcome of the current year’s opium season and, together with data from previous years, enable the identification of medium- and long-term trends in the evolution of the illicit drug problem.” “The total area under opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan was estimated to be 224,000 hectares in 2014, a 7% increase from the previous year,” says the report. Net opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan grew from 209,000 hectares in 2013 to 224,000 hectares in 2014. The UNODC has been tracking opium cultivation in Afghanistan since 1994, whne net Afghan opium production was 71,000 hectares. The 2014 cultivation of 224,000 hectares was more then triple the 1994 level.

Afhgan opium farmers working in a field in Jalalabad.

According to the 2014 World Drug Report, also published by the UNODC, Afghanistan by far the world’s largest producer of opium. “The opium production in Afghanistan accounts for 80 percent of the global opium production (5,500 tons),” said that report. In addition to having record high of opium production in 2014, Afghanistan saw opium poppy eradication decrease 63 percent. “A total of 2,692 hectares of verified poppy eradication was carried out by the provincial governors in 2014, representing a decrease of 63 percent from 2013 when 7,348 hectares of governor-led eradication (GLE) was verified by [Ministry of Counter-Narcotics and UNODC],” states the report. Hilmand province was Afghanistan’s largest opium cultivator in 2014, producing 103,240 hectares. “In 2014, 98% of total opium cultivation in Afghanistan took place in the Southern, Eastern and Western regions of the country,” explains the report.

Hilmand province was followed by Kandahar province which produced 33,713 hectares, Farah province which produced 27,513 hectares, Nangarhar which produced 18,227 hectares, Nimroz which produced 14,548 hectares, Uruzgan which produced 9,277 hectares, Badghis which produced 5,721 hectares, Badakhshan which produced 4,204 hectares, Zabul which produced 2,894 hectares, Laghman which produced 901 hectares, Kunar which produced 754 hectares, Hirat which produced 738 hectares, Day Kundi which produced 587 hectares, Ghor which produced 493 hectares, Kapisa which produced 472 hectares, Kabul which produced 233 hectares, and Sari Pul which produced 195 hectares.

Most of the U.S. casualties in Afghan War have occurred in the Hilmand and Kandahar provinces, which are also the two leading opium-growing provinces. According to CNSNews.com’s database of U.S. casualties, from 2001 through 2014, 2,232 U.S. military personnel gave their lives serving in the Afghan War. Of those 2,232 casualties, 451 were in Hilmand province and 420 were in Kandahar. That represents 39 percent of the total casualties in the war. “There is evidence that Afghan heroin is increasingly reaching new markets, such as Oceania and Southeast Asia, that had been traditionally supplied from Southeast Asia,” the report states.

Afghanistan Set Record for Growing Opium in 2014 CNS News

 

[waltky]

3100 tons less of opium production...

UN: Afghan Opium Production Down 48%
October 14, 2015 — The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported Wednesday that the amount of opium produced in Afghanistan during the current year dropped by 48 percent. "We have 3,300 tons of opium production this year as compared to 6,400 tons last year," UNODC regional representative Andrey Avetisyan,told reporters in Kabul.

The UNODC attributed the dramatic drop to better cooperation between enforcement agencies and Afghan policy makers. The reductions are significant following years of steady increase in the cultivation and production of opium in the country. Avetisyan added that while opium cultivation in 2015 also went down by 19 percent across the country, it increased in northern Afghanistan because of the deterioration of security in some places.

Afghan farmers collect raw opium as they work in a poppy field in Khogyani district of Jalalabad east of Kabul, Afghanistan.​

Helmand remains the biggest poppy producing province, but recorded a 16 percent drop since last year. There were also reductions in Kandahar, Kapisa, Zabul, Farah, Nimoroz, Herat, Nangarhar, Laghman and Badkhashan. He underscored that the Afghan drug problem remains enormous, and success in tackling it can be achieved only by close cooperation between the government and the international community. "But the purpose of today's press conference is to bring to you the good news the numbers of the 2015 poppy cultivation survey that show significant decrease of both cultivation and production," Avetisyan said.

The UNODC official called for intensifying efforts to further reduce and eliminate drug production in Afghanistan. "We hope very much that the security situation in the country will stabilize, which will help us together with the Afghan government to more successfully fight against narcotics in Afghanistan," he said. Afghanistan produces more than 80 percent of the world's illicit opium and experts believe income from the illegal trade fuels the Taliban insurgency. U.S. officials also blame the poppy production for fueling Afghan corruption and insecurity and undermining legal economy. The United States has spent $7.6 billion to help counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan since 2001.

UN: Afghan Opium Production Down 48%

 

[waltky]

Mexico wants to legalize medical opium...

Mexico debates legalizing opium poppy for medicine
Saturday 14th May, 2016 - Fed up with drug-related violence, a growing number of Mexican politicians see one potential cure: Legalising the cultivation of opium poppies for the production of medicine.

The debate has emerged in recent weeks after President Enrique Pena Nieto proposed legislation in April to loosen marijuana laws by legalising medical cannabis and easing restrictions on its recreational use. Since then, governors and congressional lawmakers have voiced their support for regulating opium poppies, which are often grown by farmers in poor areas of the country and sold to cartels as the raw material for heroin. The idea was launched by Hector Astudillo, governor of the southern state of Guerrero, which has the country's highest murder rate amid turf wars among drug cartels battling for control of the mountains where US-bound heroin is born.

Astudillo, whose state is the biggest producer of opium poppies, proposed a pilot program for the crop's cultivation for medical uses. Graco Ramirez, governor of the neighboring crime-plagued state of Morelos, which is a transit route for the drug, voiced his support. "In (the northwestern state of) Sinaloa and Guerrero, growing opium poppies is a fact of life and we must take it away from the criminals and give it to health," Ramirez said.

GOVERNMENT PREPARES BILL?

Manuel Mondragon y Kalb, the national commissioner against drug addiction, said that his agency is "deeply studying the use of opium gum as medicine, its transformation into morphine and its derivatives as painkillers." While Mondragon did not indicate whether the government was drafting some kind of legislation, El Universal newspaper said Wednesday, citing presidency sources, that the government was working on a proposal to send to Congress by the end of the year. Pena Nieto's spokesman, Eduardo Sanchez, told AFP that he had "no idea about this information" in the newspaper while Health Minister Jose Narro told reporters that Congress must first focus on the marijuana bill.

One backer of such a measure, Senator Miguel Romo, of Pena Nieto's centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), said opium poppies are regulated in "a very efficient way" in some countries where it is legal for medical uses, such as Spain. Australia, France, Turkey, Hungary and India also grow opium poppies legally for the pharmaceutical industry under international licenses. Senator Roberto Gil, of the conservative National Action Party, said that it "is stupid" that Mexico cannot use opium poppies for medical purposes when it is one of the world's major producers of the crop.

HEROIN TOO PROFITABLE

 

[waltky]

Another bumper crop of poppies in Afghanistan...

Afghans revel in bountiful opium harvest
Sun, May 22, 2016 - Lashes swished and whirled through the air in a burst of celebration around a sea of opium poppies, as farmers in a southern Afghan village rejoiced over a bumper harvest with a traditional rope game.

Hundreds of farm laborers from across Afghanistan’s Pashtun heartland, many of them Taliban, last month congregated in Naqil in Uruzgan Province for the most lucrative time of the year — the poppy harvest. After laboring all day in the torpid heat, extracting milky opium resin from swollen green pods, they broke into revelry around the bountiful farms. Hands tethered to long ropes, men lunged forward and back within a chalk circle, kicking up dust and knocking down opponents with heavy lash strokes. Hissing and hooting, a crowd of turbaned spectators gathered to watch the bare-knuckle game known colloquially as dora.

Farmers harvest opium sap in a poppy field in Naqil, Afghanistan​

A tricycle cart pulled up nearby, selling ice-cream drizzled with raspberry sauce, lending a carnival atmosphere to the harvest that is expected to bring record opium production this year. “This is the only time of the year to make money,” said Afzal Mohammad, who traveled all the way from Kandahar, standing amid chest-high poppy stalks nearby. “People work here for about 15 days and then are jobless for the rest of the year.” The revelry highlights how opium — refined into heroin — remains an economic linchpin amid rampant unemployment, and lays bare how the West lost a multibillion US dollar war on drugs in Afghanistan as it pursued a war on terror there.

Afghanistan, the world’s top opium producer, recorded more poppy cultivation in 2014 — at the end of which NATO troops officially ended their combat mission — than in any year since 2002. Last year saw a sharp decline in production, but the crop failure was more due to drought than any eradication campaign, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. The drop, observers say, has only intensified efforts to spike production this year.

MAKE OPIUM, NOT WAR

 

[waltky]

Mansour's death could fuel opium trade...

Taliban instability could fuel opium trade
Wed, 25 May 2016 - The death of the Taliban leader Mullah Mansour could lead to increased instability in Afghanistan, and provide a boost to the opium trade, says Justin Rowlatt.

Mullah Mansour, Afghan Taliban leader and the commander of a militia of thousands of men, died a lonely death. He was rattling across the arid wastes of the Baluch desert in Pakistan on Saturday morning in that most Afghan of cars - a battered white Toyota Corrola - when the missile, fired from a US drone, struck his vehicle. All that was left was a charred and twisted wreck beside the desert highway. US President Barack Obama described his death as an "important milestone", but disentangling what it actually marks is not straightforward. The most obvious question is what it will mean for the Taliban.

The Pentagon said it had targeted Mansour because he had become "an obstacle to peace and reconciliation". But it isn't clear that the new leader will be any more open towards the peace process. Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhunzada was Mullah Mansour's former deputy, and the official line from the Taliban is that his approach is going to be very similar. What's more, his appointment doesn't rule out the possibility of a battle for succession. Mansour struggled to contain the splintering of the movement into a series of factions that followed the death of Mullah Omar, the founder of the Taliban.

That would increase instability in Afghanistan, fuelling local conflicts and entrenching the insurgency. Then, there is the question of what it means for US relations with Pakistan, which are regarded as crucial to the effort to fight global terrorism. The drone attack suggests the US has lost patience with the Pakistani authorities, which have failed to bring the Taliban to the table, while allegedly harbouring the movement's leaders. So the killing of Mullah Mansour may actually set back the efforts to negotiate a peace settlement.

On Monday, the US ambassador was summoned to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry to be harangued about what it described as a "violation of Pakistan's sovereignty". The official Pakistani line is that the attack will be an obstacle to future talks. The third question is the one most likely to affect those outside the region: the impact on the drugs trade. It would be tempting to conclude that removing Mansour will make the battle to eradicate opium more straightforward. Mansour helped oversee the transformation of the Taliban from a movement of pious fanatics, largely funded by true believers from abroad, into something very different.

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Pakistani Minister Accuses U.S. of ‘Sabotaging’ Peace Talks by Killing Taliban Leader
May 25, 2016 – Islamabad’s outspoken interior minister has lashed out at the United States for the drone strike that killed Taliban leader Akhtar Mohammad Mansour in Pakistani territory, accusing it of “sabotaging” peace talks with the terrorist group.

“You can’t expect the Taliban to come to the negotiating table after killing their leader,” Chaudry Nisar Ali Khan told a press conference in the capital. “You can’t initiate peace talks and hope for its success, when on the other side you are following the policy of aggression.” Khan recalled that Mansour had thrown his support behind a Taliban delegation which held a dialogue with Afghan officials, hosted by Pakistan in Muree, near Islamabad, last year. “We were seeing some hope, but this incident occurred, sabotaging the dialogue process,” he said, referring to Saturday’s drone strike on a car in which Mansour and a driver were traveling in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.

The U.S. supports an ailing Afghan-led reconciliation process between Kabul and Taliban figures who agree to renounce violence, abandon their alliance with al-Qaeda, and abide by the constitution of Afghanistan. But both the U.S. and Afghan governments charge that Mansour was in no way promoting dialogue. Mansour “was neither encouraging people to talk nor supporting the talks nor supportive of reconciliation,” Secretary of State John Kerry said early this week. “If people want to stand in the way of peace, continue to threaten and kill and blow people up, we have no recourse but to respond, and I think we responded appropriately.”

An Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman described Mansour as “irreconcilable.” Khan complained that the killing of the Taliban leader “has put Pakistan in a very difficult situation.” “This act is totally illegal, unacceptable and against the sovereignty and integrity of the country,” he said. Khan claimed that the U.S. only notified Pakistan about the strike seven hours after it occurred. Asked about that claim Tuesday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he would not discuss “operational details” of the incident. But he added that “these are very narrow windows in any case, and it’s not just with friends and allies or partners or whoever, but in any of these instances, it’s absolutely vital to keep operational security.”

Asked whether Pakistan wasn’t informed beforehand because it could not be trusted, Toner reiterated that “operational security trumps a need to inform other governments.” ‘The world will turn into a battle zone’ Khan at his press conference said the U.S. sought to justify drone strikes by declaring that it will target its enemies “wherever they are.” “But we have a problem with this logic, because if every country starts working on this approach then the world will turn into a battle zone,” he added.

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[waltky]

Afghan police helpin' opium growers...

The opium farmers with the police on their side
Sat, 28 May 2016 - The opium growers with the police on their side

This year, Afghanistan is expected to produce more opium than the world consumes. Although billions of dollars have been spent trying to eradicate the crop, in some places the trade seems more institutionalised than ever, with local police openly supporting farmers. Mazar-e-Sharif is one of the safest and best-run cities in the Afghanistan - a model of good governance - yet just half an hour out of town in a small village of mud-walled houses it is obvious what the main cash crop is. I stop at a big poppy field right beside the road. It must be 100m square. Thousands of swollen poppy heads nod gently at me in the dawn breeze.

Across the field, five or six men are working, scraping the bulbs with a sickle-shaped tool. They look up, but they don't seem concerned. The villager who is guiding me gestures to indicate I can go into the field. The plants are waist high and brush against me as I walk. The heads are bigger than I expected, about the size of a large plum. Most have a blackish purple dribble on the side. Each afternoon the workers score the bulbs with a series of tiny scratches. Overnight the sap suppurates out to form a dark scab. It is hard to believe this is the source of so much misery and conflict in the world.

A farmer holding an opium poppy​

For a moment I'm back in a history class in my school in north London, rain lashing down on the windows, learning about the opium wars. I remember people I knew from that time who became addicted to heroin. Two are dead now. I touch the opium with my finger. I expect it to be sticky, but it is actually surprisingly moist. The reddish black colour is a thin skin. Underneath, it is white and the texture of pus. I sniff it. It barely smells at all - perhaps a hint of grass cuttings or crushed leaves - but in this form, the legendary intoxicant is almost odourless. I rub it between my fingers. It darkens and becomes more gummy.

Curiosity overcomes me. I raise my finger to my mouth and dab my tongue, just for a moment. It tastes horrible, bitter and metallic. I am startled by a shout. One of the harvesters, his salwar kameez brown with opium stains, has been watching me. He saw me taste the drug. "Don't do that. That stuff is very bad for you," he says. "Haven't you ever been tempted to try it?" I want to know. "I know that if I start using it, I'll get addicted and my future will be destroyed. The people who use it - I've seen them in the cities lying down, their family life is destroyed, their children don't go to school," he tells me. "But you're helping produce the stuff. Don't you feel guilty?" I ask. I'm not surprised by his answer. "I've got no choice," he says. "I've got no job and you get good money with the opium."

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