Opium Production Hits Record High In Afghanistan

[Origanalist]

PoliticsInternationalBy: Samuel Eaton May 3, 2014



Afghanistan - The SIGAR, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, issued a report on April 30th stating that opium poppy cultivation has increased by over a third. The report also stated that there are now 1.3 million heroin users in the country. This is up 10 fold since 2005 when there were roughly 130,000 heroin users.

International forces occupying Afghanistan have had little success slowing down the poppy cultivation and heroin production. In 2013, only 41,000 kilograms of opium out of 5.5 million kilograms produced were seized.

The drug trade has boomed in spite of the US spending $7.5 billion since 2002 on eradication efforts.

continued...


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[William Tell]

I love the headline...

[Czolgosz]

[69360]

Karzai has to make money somehow now that we aren't sending him pallets of it anymore.

[tod evans]

Kill the DEA and its drug laws!

The American public would be better off, the Afghani public would be better off and government forces wouldn't be able to justify their aggressive behavior any longer.

[69360]

Kill the DEA and its drug laws!

The American public would be better off, the Afghani public would be better off and government forces wouldn't be able to justify their aggressive behavior any longer.

Do you think having 1 of every 30 citizens hooked on smack is a good thing? That's the present situation in Afghanistan.

I'm fine with legal weed and support getting rid mandatory minimum sentences, but how much good would come of legal readily available heroin? Imagine a US with 10 million heroin addicts.

[tod evans]

Do you think having 1 of every 30 citizens hooked on smack is a good thing? That's the present situation in Afghanistan.

I'm fine with legal weed and support getting rid mandatory minimum sentences, but how much good would come of legal readily available heroin?

Oh quit with the Boogity-boogity $#@!!

Do you honestly see a major uptick in opiate usage among those not currently taking pain medication?

I don't.

[Anti Federalist]

Do you think having 1 of every 30 citizens hooked on smack is a good thing? That's the present situation in Afghanistan.

I'm fine with legal weed and support getting rid mandatory minimum sentences, but how much good would come of legal readily available heroin? Imagine a US with 10 million heroin addicts.

Imagine?

I don't have to.

America before 1930.

Where I could argue, convincingly, that we were more free and productive than we are now.

[dannno]

Do you think having 1 of every 30 citizens hooked on smack is a good thing? That's the present situation in Afghanistan.

I'm fine with legal weed and support getting rid mandatory minimum sentences, but how much good would come of legal readily available heroin? Imagine a US with 10 million heroin addicts.

Dude... do you not realize that vicodin and oxycontin are opiates the same as heroin?? Our country has PLENTY of opiate addicts. And what would be best for them? If OPIUM were legal and they were able to use OPIUM instead of heroin.. Opium is what is scraped off of the poppy flower, then it is manufactured into heroin. They produce heroin on the black market because it is more compact and they can make a higher margin on their shipments, if it were legal then more users would demand the safer and healthier version of heroin which is opium. I strongly believe that opium is safer than prescription opiates as well, vicodin does all sorts of damage.

[Anti Federalist]

International forces occupying Afghanistan have had little success slowing down the poppy cultivation and heroin production. In 2013, only 41,000 kilograms of opium out of 5.5 million kilograms produced were seized.

The drug trade has boomed in spite of the US spending $7.5 billion since 2002 on eradication efforts.

They have had little success because they are there to do just the opposite: protect and nurture the cultivation of opium.

The Taliban wiped it out, that's the dirty little secret about why they had to go.

This is what Pat Tillman was going to expose when his tour was finished.

And why he was fragged by our own men on a rocky, dusty hill in the middle of nowhere.

[specsaregood]

Do you think having 1 of every 30 citizens hooked on smack is a good thing? That's the present situation in Afghanistan.

I'm fine with legal weed and support getting rid mandatory minimum sentences, but how much good would come of legal readily available heroin? Imagine a US with 10 million heroin addicts.

Uhm, imagine? take a look around pal.

Experts say most of those prescriptions are unnecessary. The United States makes up only 4.6 percent of the world's population, but consumes 80 percent of its opioids -- and 99 percent of the world's hydrocodone, the opiate that is in Vicodin.

"Vicodin is the most prescribed opioid mainly because it's been incorrectly scheduled as a class III rather than a II," says Andrew Kolodny, Chair of Psychiatry at Maimonides Medical Center in New York. "Many states have prescribing regulations linked to DEA scheduling. But it is no less abusable or addictive than Oxycodone or heroin."

Who is prescribing all that Vicodin? More than 600,000 doctors, from surgeons to podiatrists, are licensed by the Durg Enforcement Agency to prescribe the drug. At the top of the list of pain relief prescribers are primary care doctors, followed by internists and then dentists. According to many critics, doctors often prescribe Vicodin because it is not as tightly regulated as other narcotic pain relievers are, although it is just as dangerous.

"Opioids are essentially legal heroine," says Lewis Nelson, who served on an FDA panel to revise the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) associated with the prescription drugs.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/prescriptio...ry?id=13421828

[kcchiefs6465]

Do you think having 1 of every 30 citizens hooked on smack is a good thing? That's the present situation in Afghanistan.

I'm fine with legal weed and support getting rid mandatory minimum sentences, but how much good would come of legal readily available heroin? Imagine a US with 10 million heroin addicts.

A lot of good, actually. (for instance, tens of thousands of people would be released from jail, property crimes would go down, STD rates would be combatted, AIDS, Hepatitis, Sepsis, etc. could be drastically reduced, overdoses would be reduced, people might not find it necessary to sell their bodies for drugs, gang warfare, aside from retaliatory vendettas would come close to an end, children would find it harder to obtain the drug, people looking to buy marijuana wouldn't find their product cross contaminated with heroin residue, the police could get real goddamn jobs, K9 units wouldn't need to be choked and whipped into obedience, CPS could as well, the most of them, find real goddamn jobs, the citizens of Afghanistan, or Burma, could find themselves largely free from the tyranny of war/druglords, the DEA could get real goddamn jobs, the courts wouldn't be flooded with drug cases creating an atmosphere of automated sentencing and much more)

How much good comes from crack dens, AIDS infested whores, and a billy club beating the citizenry?

80+% of people in jail have committed no crime (there is no victim). We are speaking of well over a million and a half people. The horrors they are subjected to are unimaginable.

Why do you think you, or a group you can relate to or gather up, have the authority to tell someone what they can or cannot put into their body? Would you not be content with simply voicing your opinion that heroin is bad? Do you really find it necessary to steal from me to cage non-violent, non-criminals (thus turning many into criminals in the process [and I'd further clarify that it would be you, not them, committing crimes])? And finally, how many decades and shattered lives are enough for you to admit the abject failure that is the war on drugs?

And also, I would be very surprised if there aren't already 10 million heroin addicts in this country.

[kcchiefs6465]

Do you think having 1 of every 30 citizens hooked on smack is a good thing? That's the present situation in Afghanistan.

I'm fine with legal weed and support getting rid mandatory minimum sentences, but how much good would come of legal readily available heroin? Imagine a US with 10 million heroin addicts.

Just a point I missed before, were you aware that the CIA was/is very much culpable (when they weren't directly involved) in the global drug trade?

The poor, peasant Hmong exploited by CIA "unsavories" (what they call terrorists, child molesters, murderers etc. that they do business with), loading opium onto Air America flights? This is well documented.

US soldiers in the region were pimped/provided heroin. They didn't care about addiction then!

And as well, when opium was being shipped to laboratories in Saigon or Marseilles for refinement, destined for America, while they were beating people in the 'homeland' for using the poison they so quickly provided.... where was the justice? Where is the justice?

And where is the justice for the opium corporatists using the military to guard crops in Kandahar?

But give a poor man five years for .2 grams...

[tod evans]

And where is the justice for the opium corporatists using the military to guard crops in Kandahar?

There will bo no justice until the people....

Get a rope!

[Origanalist]

69360 is having a Frank Rep moment.

[Origanalist]

Dude... do you not realize that vicodin and oxycontin are opiates the same as heroin?? Our country has PLENTY of opiate addicts. And what would be best for them? If OPIUM were legal and they were able to use OPIUM instead of heroin.. Opium is what is scraped off of the poppy flower, then it is manufactured into heroin. They produce heroin on the black market because it is more compact and they can make a higher margin on their shipments, if it were legal then more users would demand the safer and healthier version of heroin which is opium. I strongly believe that opium is safer than prescription opiates as well, vicodin does all sorts of damage.

I agree totally. Opium is not heroin and if it was legal there wouldn't be anywhere near the heroin addicts we now. People may say opium dens wouldn't be any better but that's just foolishness.

[69360]

New England has a huge heroin problem. We see it every day and not just because of the crime. It's people who can't care for their kids and themselves and ODs. Yes a lot of the current addicts started out on oxys and moved to heroin because it was cheap and available. I don't have all the answers, but making it even cheaper and easier to get, I can't see that helping. Yeah crime will go down, but having so many addicted to something so devastating doesn't seem like a way for society to function. Heroin isn't a recreational drug like weed and alcohol. Putting addicts in jail isn't the answer either.

[Origanalist]

New England has a huge heroin problem. We see it every day and not just because of the crime. It's people who can't care for their kids and themselves and ODs. Yes a lot of the current addicts started out on oxys and moved to heroin because it was cheap and available. I don't have all the answers, but making it even cheaper and easier to get, I can't see that helping. Yeah crime will go down, but having so many addicted to something so devastating doesn't seem like a way for society to function. Heroin isn't a recreational drug like weed and alcohol. Putting addicts in jail isn't the answer either.

Somebody should tell our government to quit enabling the heroin trade.

[tod evans]

New England has a huge heroin problem. We see it every day and not just because of the crime. It's people who can't care for their kids and themselves and ODs. Yes a lot of the current addicts started out on oxys and moved to heroin because it was cheap and available. I don't have all the answers, but making it even cheaper and easier to get, I can't see that helping. Yeah crime will go down, but having so many addicted to something so devastating doesn't seem like a way for society to function. Heroin isn't a recreational drug like weed and alcohol. Putting addicts in jail isn't the answer either.

This is where personal responsibility comes in...

As it sits government is accepting responsibility and we all know about the fine job government does with everything it gets involved in...

[jkob]

CIA making a lot of money smuggling it in

[pcosmar]

Do you think having 1 of every 30 citizens hooked on smack is a good thing? That's the present situation in Afghanistan.
.

BULL$#@!

That is the fear mongering headline.
Afghanistan produced opium,, long before Russia invaded. Long ago we used to get some good Hashish from there that was lightly flavored with opium.
Haven't seen that in decades. and though I'm sure there are opium users there,, I doubt many use heroin. It is generally processed from opium for other world markets. And likely done in Europe.

The Taliban nearly wiped out production. Our Troops have been protecting the Poppy Fields.

[phill4paul]

69360 is having a Frank Rep moment.

Yup.

[69360]

This is where personal responsibility comes in...

As it sits government is accepting responsibility and we all know about the fine job government does with everything it gets involved in...

Will it? I think it would be more like natural selection, not personal responsibility. Legal heroin would equal a lot of dead people around here anyway.

I don't have a good answer for this problem.

[tod evans]

Will it? I think it would be more like natural selection, not personal responsibility. Legal heroin would equal a lot of dead people around here anyway.

I don't have a good answer for this problem.

It's entirely possible that legal opium would reduce the heroin problem....

[dannno]

Will it? I think it would be more like natural selection, not personal responsibility. Legal heroin would equal a lot of dead people around here anyway.

I don't have a good answer for this problem.

Have you really read all of our responses and that is the best you can come up with?? I don't understand why all of this logic isn't changing your viewpoint, can you please respond to some previous posts so that we can figure out where the hold-up is?

The issue is OPIATE addiction. Heroin is an extremely addictive opiate because it destroys your red blood cells and if you do it for a long time when you come down it feels like you have the flu. The only way to get rid of your flu symptoms is to shoot up more heroin. That doesn't happen with other opiates, although other opiates can be very addictive.

So why is heroin made? You probably think they make heroin because that is what opiate addicts prefer. NOT TRUE. Now LISTEN! What you don't understand, and what we have been trying to explain to you is that the reason heroin is produced by the black market is because it is more compact and more can be smuggled at higher profit margins...IT IS A BUSINESS DECISION.. Heroin addicts buy heroin because that is the opiate available on the streets, if they had a choice they would choose another opiate that didn't make them feel like $#@! after they binged on it, don't you think?? In a free market, other opiates would be available and you would have LESS heroin addicts because there would be very little reason to produce heroin in the first place.

Now, if you have a problem with opiate addiction in general and think this will make it a much bigger problem, then you clearly haven't been reading the other posts in this thread about how many opiate addicts ALREADY exist in this country who are using legal opiate prescription drugs..

The answer is to LEGALIZE, especially the safest alternatives, which in this case is pure opium.

[tod evans]

But, but they said on the newz that heroin is going to kill the children........

[anaconda]

How much are military personnel skimming off the Afghan crop to deal? And what fat percentage does the CIA scrape off the top for it's black budget? Foreign intervention is a racket.

[pcosmar]

Will it? I think it would be more like natural selection, not personal responsibility. Legal heroin would equal a lot of dead people around here anyway.

I don't have a good answer for this problem.

Legalize it..

It was not a big problem when it was legal. Over the counter at the local Drugstore.



From the makers of Bayer Aspirin.

And pay the farmers a fair market value,, rather than the smugglers and gangs.

[phill4paul]

Will it? I think it would be more like natural selection, not personal responsibility. Legal heroin would equal a lot of dead people around here anyway.

I don't have a good answer for this problem.

You don't have any answers for any problems. You leave it up to the government.

[acptulsa]

Will it? I think it would be more like natural selection, not personal responsibility. Legal heroin would equal a lot of dead people around here anyway.

I don't have a good answer for this problem.

It's entirely possible that legal opium would reduce the heroin problem....

It might.

Failing that, another good answer would be to not invade Afghanistan to enable the CIA can kick the Taliban out and ramp production back up again.

Just a thought. Obviously, either way the government is willing only to make the problem worse.