Opium fields spread across Iraq as farmers try to make ends meet

So, Dim Son, how is your war on drugs going? Ya gonna lose that one too?

Not only is Afghanistan coming in with a bumper crop, but now Iraq is getting into the act.

The cultivation of opium poppies whose product is turned into heroin is spreading rapidly across Iraq as farmers find they can no longer make a living through growing traditional crops.

Via Independent.

War on poppy succeeds, but cannabis thrives, in one Afghan province

Ya can't make up this shit. Hahaha

As the Afghan and Western governments focused on the soaring Afghan opium production, cannabis cultivation increased 40 percent.

Its the Afghan version of crop rotation.

Via Seattle Times.

Opium in Afghanistan: Eradicate or subsidize?

This is working in Turkey. The report I saw (and lost) stated almost no one grows opium and sells illegally to drug dealers. They lose their licenses to grow opium for, I believe three years, and the farmers can't afford that. The government also closely watches over the farmers.

Its good income for the farmers and for the government which buys the crops and produces morphine.

Eradication causes loss of income, resentment and pushes the people to embrace the Taleban.

As opium harvests in Afghanistan have steadily increased, some politicians and think tanks have raised a trenchant question: Rather than trying to eradicate Afghanistan's poppies, why not buy them and make morphine?

Now there has to be some graft and corruption. I mean huge sacks of morphine have to be tempting.

Via IHT.

This Can't Be Good

Isn't anything going right it the Mid-East? Just asking.

A "cancer of insurgency" in southern Afghanistan could drive the 2007 opium poppy harvest to record levels, the U.N. drug agency chief said Monday.

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime predicted that last year's harvest record would be broken by an increase in 15 provinces, including Helmand — the world's largest poppy-growing region and the scene of a growing number of attacks by Taliban fighters who use opium to fund their insurgency.

Well its good if you're a user. Otherwise it's horrible.

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