Afghanistan Cannabis Production Rises...

[solabeirtan]

UN reports Afghanistan produced 1,400 tonnes of commercial cannabis resin in 2012, worth around 65m USD
or about $23.21 a lb
 

By Emma Graham-Harrison


Government efforts to stamp out poppy farming may even push up production of cannabis, the report warned. Last year the UN said Afghanistan's importance as a source of resin for world markets might be growing as more farmers switched to the crop.

Cannabis resin can be much more lucrative than opium for individual farmers. It brings in over $1,500 in extra earnings per hectare, requires less weeding and is comparatively easy to harvest. However the plants need irrigation at a time when streams fed by snow melt are drying up and a long summer growing season can stop subsistence farmers planting vital food crops on the land.

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Edited November 14, 2013 by solabeirtan

[trichcycler]

stamp out poppy farming ? really, last I noticed our government has assembled the worlds mightiest war machine and surrounded these tiny poppy fields to guard them, for decades now. Heroin thrives in this and other countries all the while. You gotta wonder one thing though, if freighter loads of morphine base are "smuggled: from these fields monthly, could this be how ALL of the terrorists, weapons, dirty bombs, intel, etc is getting through?

 

Like, if you want to smuggle anything out of Afghanistan, just wrap it in heroin, nobody will ever find it !

[solabeirtan]

I Suppose it is just another cost of the 'Drug War'. The inclusion of a huge variety of completely different substances into one single sinister category: Drugs. As in just say no [to Drugs].

As you can see in this video Heroin is another substance derived from opium. It is far more potent and addictive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD_MtAcg3sw

 

 Afghanistan is not known so much for heroin prouction, but one of it's main ingredients, which is derived directly from the poppy plant, Opium. However heroin is produced there but it is with Hydrochloric Acid and other precurser chemicals obtained from Europe as detailed here:

as they do not have the facilities to produce them.

[trichcycler]

but when their morphine base opium tar  is shipped out, it's processed as heroin and sold mostly to our citizens, as heroin.

they are growing poppies because of the proceeds from American heroin users I believe.

The book "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade" is the most detailed account I've read.

They say

The first book to prove CIA and U.S. government complicity in global drug trafficking, The Politics of Heroin includes meticulous documentation of dishonesty and dirty dealings at the highest levels from the Cold War until today. Maintaining a global perspective, this groundbreaking study details the mechanics of drug trafficking in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South and Central America. New chapters detail U.S. involvement in the narcotics trade in Afghanistan and Pakistan before and after the fall of the Taliban, and how U.S. drug policy in Central America and Colombia has increased the global supply of illicit drugs.

long thick book, worth the read, and library space

[solabeirtan]

Sounds interesting. I will see if I can find a copy. The video I posted is a fairly comprehensive history up to about the 70s, including the first drug laws, etc... Some might find it a bit on the lengthy side too. It also doesn't mention the CIA.

I was surprised to see this in the above link:as they do not have the facilities to produce them.

 

"The Afghan government has ruled out licit cultivation as a means of tackling the illegal drug trade: however in Turkey in the 1970s, legalizing opium production, with US support brought illicit trafficking under control within four years. Afghan villages have strong local control systems based around the village shura, which with the support of the Afghan government and its international allies, could provide the basis for an effective control system. This idea is developed in the recent Senlis Council report "Poppy for Medicine"^[34] which proposes a technical model for the implementation of poppy licensing and the legal control of cultivation and production of Afghan morphine"

[trichcycler]

I heard of the coca leaf resurgence too a couple years ago, and I think there is even a coca coffee shop in Amsterdam celebrating the medicinal. a brave new world is approaching......

[greenbuddha]

The leaders in these countries are connected to the profits made from the sales of these drugs and our 'agencies' in those countries know they cannot send in our military until they 'play ball' with the in-country politicians that run things. So rather than upset the 'drug' apple cart our agencies either ignore the drug trade or actually help the transfer of the 'product' to get the cooperation our government wants... whether our mission inside the foreign country is a good one or not. 

 

And as long as these 'drugs' remain illegal, which also drives the prices up, most of the money made from them will go to the wrong people and end up creating more violence and harm.

 

Hopefully things will change... but don't hold your breath.