Announced about a week and a half ago, the U.S. government is about to make a dramatic departure from its (supposed) previous anti-drug attack – the eradication of the opium poppy.
Richard Holbrooke, stated recently at the G-8 conference in Trieste, Italy, that American troops in Afghanistan were now going to be focused on impacting the world’s opium trade by new methods.
The truth is eradication has basically failed because it’s been Afghanistan’s political “hot potato.” According to Narco-terrorism experts Rachel Ehrenfeld and Walton Cook, the drug trade there put hundreds of millions of dollars in the coffers of terrorism and something needed to be done!
Opium has been the Afghan farmer’s premier cash crop, supplying 80 - 90% of the world’s heroin, but that the opiate output has risen dramatically since the 2001 U.S. attacks on local-based terrorists. This opium tar-like substance was shipped from India (in a false bottom box) to a commercial enterprise to Georgia.
The opium crop has financially supported the Taliban, said, Holbrooke, but he began to back-peddle stating 'some crop eradication would take place but only in limited areas', and that eradication is to be “phased out”. From here on, the emphasis would be a three-pronged attack: 1) intercepting the drugs, 2) intercepting the chemical precursors used to make heroin, and 3) going after the drug lords.
Next, Italian Foreign Minister Frattini stated the U.S. planned to cut back funding for the eradication but was allocating several hundred million dollars to support “legal crop cultivation ? ? ?” When discussed previously, that always referred to morphine, also an opiate.
The U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime stated they are committed to a joint effort with Afghanistan, and Pakistan officials to stop al-Qaeda’s drug trafficking. Iran, known to be supporting (Hamas and Hezbullah terrorist) declined to attend the meeting. Afghanistan worried about the recent turmoil in neighboring Iran, also faces an election and President Karzai seems to be concerned about Afghanistan being seen as free, fair, and credible.
Complicating the region even more, Pakistan’s war against the Taliban is progressing in the Swat Valley but has displaced near 2 million people. The question is, … where will the terrorists attack? Will they try to continue and destabilize the refugee problem, try to retake the lucrative Heroin trade or both?
Narco-terrorist experts Ehrenfeld and Cook brought up a comparison that stings to the quick … stating that the 21,000 child casualties to drugs in 2003 would equal 7 - 9/11 attacks on the twin towers / Pentagon / and Pennsylvania. They also noted that it was the UK that had control of the money meant for eradication - that didn’t happen and that it’s the poppy crop / heroin money that funds the warlords - that it’s complicated and interlinked and rules the entire region.
Also, a mycoherbicide, (pleospora papaveracea) was considered and thought to be successful for eradicating the opium poppy. It was experimented with for years (mainly by the CIA against the coca and other mycoherbicides also targeting marijuana plants), after discovery in the Soviet union, but they never came to fruition. The U.N. vetoed the idea and discarded it after the realization of the harm done to mammals.
Though discussed, according to the website then Senator Biden was one of the supporters of mycoherbicides for eradicating drug crops back in 2005.
Another anti-drug-war website stated, “The State Department doesn't want to touch it. The CIA backs away from it. The DEA has washed its hand of it. The drug czar scoffs at it. Nobody in the federal government wants to get involved with mycoherbicides, the pathogenic fungi that could theoretically be applied to coca crops in the Andes, opium crops in Afghanistan, or any other crop, for that matter.”
Cattle die on tansy weed here in the U.S. The “planting” of caterpillars that target the tansy weed here in Oregon was a good idea, but these mycoherbicides are something that’s probably very unwise to mess with.
Violent Columbian and Mexican cartels are now suspected to be working with international terrorists. Legalizers promote growing pot locally to eliminate this connection, meanwhile they refuse to admit that for decades their buying drugs have been supporting the cartels and that they’ve been the root of the problem!
Rachel Ehrenfeld is a member of Drug Watch International.
Most members of Drug Watch International have supported the eradication of the Afghanistan poppy crop for years.
Comments
Mr. English did you ever have a sled named “Rosebud”? It seems your vigilance for eradication and interdiction would be better suited in helping your fellow Americans make a better world without the added vigilante prohibitionist mantra you prescribe to. Give peace a chance.
Finally I will address this idiotic statement: “Violent Columbian and Mexican cartels are now suspected to be working with international terrorists. Legalizers promote growing pot locally to eliminate this connection, meanwhile they refuse to admit that for decades their buying drugs have been supporting the cartels and that they’ve been the root of the problem”! First “legalizer” is NOT a word and for that matter we are abolitionists. Second, it IS the prohibition supporting the cartels and NOT the drug(s) themselves. If cannabis were legalized, if all drugs were legalized for that matter, what wares would the cartels have to pedal? Canned soup?
Good thing the policy towards eradication is changing; after all it was a resounding success. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, hectares used for opium cultivation: 2001-8000 & 2007-193,000, metric tons of opium per annual harvest: 2001-185 & 2007-8,200, the price per kilogram of Afghan opium: early 2003-$600 and early 2008-$100. Open your eyes John, the truth is right in front of you and yet you continue to choose not to accept it. Instead you choose to continue on this crusade that has as much logic as a tampon dispenser in the men’s room. With limited government funding, where do you think Capitalism’s Invisible Army obtains most of its funding from? Candy bars? Here are a few name drops: The Phoenix Program, Operations Pegasus & Watchtower, Oscar D. Blandon, Norwin Meneses, and The politics of Heroin; CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. There have been former agents from the DEA, CIA, and the like resign after going on these alleged drug-drops.
jz--the point of the article seems to be that the users are the problem. No need for eradication without the users. That's what Clinton said as well. But if the product is available, the users will be found by drug promoters, legal and illegal. A better world? A world of drug addiction is a better world? Then we have two different views of a better world.
Even if poppy production does increase, it would just mean that (in the short term) the market would be flooded and the price of opuim would drop and then less people would bother growing it, causing a shortage which would raise the price back to normal. In the long run it would just even out.
Same thing happens when they go all out trying to eradicate it. The price rises, everyone starts growing it, then the market gets flooded, then the price just evens out to how it was in the first place. It's a cycle that alot of people can't seem to get there heads around.
If you want to get rid of the illegal opium trade then you need to get rid of the need for a illegal opium trade. Put heroin on prescription! If legal it would be a very cheap drug and you could knock to birds out with one stone. No more junkies on the street robbing you for there next fix and there would be no customers for the illegal opium trade.
It would be a win, win situation.
I see one of the three John English supporters are here, so for the FOURTH time I issue this challenge: Though nothing smoked is harmless, enlighten me as to what makes cannabis so dangerous? We know it isn't the THC as that is a schedule III substance. So what chemical(s) are lurking in cannabis that makes it so dangerous? Better yet, what in cannabis is more harmful than the isotopes of uranium-238 found in tobacco?
Dave, I totally argee. It would be a much better world without addiction (a world with just cannabis and hallucinogens, no alcohol, pills or powders, LOL). It would also be a better world if there was no pain or suffering, but that's just not reality. The reality is there will always be people that are addicted to drugs and if we treated addiction as a illness and prescribed and monitored there drug use as well as giving them the support they need, then of course it would be a better world than just calling them junkies and isolating them by classing them as criminals.
Dear John,
Please diaf
Sincerely,
The Human Race
re: "the drug trade there put hundreds of millions of dollars in the coffers of terrorism and something needed to be done"
This is why opium should be as legal for Afghan farmers to grow - as it is for British or Indian or Turkish or Tasmanian farmers to grow. (Legal to grow there.)
All free people of the world should be able to grow and use any flower they choose.
The problem is prohibition, which converts flowers that are worth very little into something worth its weight in gold.
That's a function of prohibition.
Where has prohibition ever succeeded? Saudi Arabia? Yemen? Dubai? Communist China? Sweden? Sure, they shoot and pitchfork dopers into prison or forced 'treatment' all they can, but prohibition still does not keep the illicit flowers out of the hands of those who want them. Even in China or Arabia. Just drives up the cost.
For extra credit, read: The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred McCoy. Western intel agencies always get big money from pr
I guess i just don't get it. Seems to me it would be easier to just buy it from the farmers than trying to interdict it, But maybe that would be too easy.
Yeah, but the rich countrys like Australia, turkey and India are never going to allow a poor country who really need the industry to cut into there profits.
You could offer protection to the farmers as long as they had no connection to the Taliban and gain the trust of the afgan people, which would end up helping it to stabilize the country.
But I'm sure just going in there and destroying the peoples only source of income, then shooting everything that moves is a good way to stabilize afganistan, too!
John thinks drug eradication involves sub-machine guns, lots of lead, and maybe an air assult with carpet bombs.
Screw using your brains when you have bronze!
Glad to see John is still incoherent.
***DAVE - Come out from under your rock and bring John with. A world without drug addiction is like chasing that rainbow for a pot of gold. Keep running boys!
I'm still chickling over the article from a couple of days ago that strained the usage of logic to the point of totally nutty humor.
(i.e. Some random guy in a loony bin, coupled with a video about exponential growth in society means that marijuana users are going insane mroe quickly and runnning off of a cliff of insanity like lemmings).
That was just priceless John.
...And I am still waiting for you to man up John and address your detractors here. Jesus! you must be weak. Aqueous Chemist poses an almost daily challenge of:
"Though nothing smoked is harmless, enlighten me as to what makes cannabis so dangerous? We know it isn't the THC as that is a schedule III substance. So what chemical(s) are lurking in cannabis that makes it so dangerous? Better yet, what in cannabis is more harmful than the isotopes of uranium-238 found in tobacco?"
You however don't have the stones to address him. You instead, just seem to labour under the delusional impression that your goofy articles are persuading anyone. You are pretty pathetic John.
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