Afghan Opium's 'Devastating' Impact Outlined in U.N. Report

[G_j]

Source: PBS

Afghan Opium's 'Devastating' Impact Outlined in U.N. Report


A new U.N. report describes Afghanistan as producing 92 percent of the world's opium market, feeding 15 million addicts and funding Taliban insurgents and terrorist organizations.


"We have identified the global consequences of the Afghan opium trade. Some are devastating," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, which released its report Wednesday.

"I urge the friends of Afghanistan to recognize that, to a large extent, these uncomfortable truths may be the result of their benign neglect," he said, according to the Agence France-Presse.

Much of the opium revenues are helping fund Taliban insurgents, the report says. The UNODC estimates that the Taliban earned $90 million to $160 million per year from taxing the production and smuggling of opium and heroin between 2005 and 2009, as much as double the amount they earned while in power nearly a decade ago, reported the Agence France-Presse.

"The Taliban's direct involvement in the opium trade allows them to fund a war machine that is becoming technologically more complex and increasingly widespread," Costa said.

He called the Afghanistan-Pakistan border "the world's largest free-trade zone in anything and everything that is illicit -- drugs of course, but also weapons, bomb-making equipment, chemical precursors, drug money, even people and migrants."

Read more: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/asia/july-dec09/afghan_10-22.html

[Arctic Dave]

1. It seems the CIA is a very good teacher.

Drugs for guns and terror. Where could Taliban have learned such a horrible business.

[saigon68]

3. Redux Laos 1969

[Arctic Dave]

2. It seems the CIA is a very good teacher.

Drugs for guns and terror. Where could Taliban have learned such a horrible business.

[SpiralHawk]

4. "Smirk." - xCommander AWOL & BFEE (R)

[Lu Galasso]

5. we should be buying it

Christopher Hitchens made the suggestion that we buy a mot of opium from turkey or hungry I forget which one. Why don't we start buying Opium from Afghanistan as a sort of development investment. get fields out of the hands of war-lords and totally legitimatize the trade. If opium grows well in that environment we should be taking advantage of it. We use opium for our pharmaceutical pain-killers.

[KakistocracyHater]

6. So have the Red Cross buy it raw from them at a slightly higher price

& turn it into morphine & codeine instead. WTF? Idiot leaders can't think of this win/win solution? It IS easier than you think, so don't even try to tell me otherwise.

[Lagomorph]

7. UN narcotics body stated the legal supply of opium for medical purposes including pain management...

...is enough to meet global demand.

http://www.dchq.ir/html/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7447

[KakistocracyHater]

8. so we should just LET them make into opium?

? Is that what you're saying?

[Lagomorph]

9. No, I'm saying there is no legal need for their product.

They produce 92% of the world's opium and most or all of it is illegal. It appears that Turkey and India can meet the legitimate demand for opiate base and morphine. The Taliban is sitting on 12,000 tons of opium, and there is probably no chance of getting our hands on it. They want to turn it into heroin inside Afghanistan to increase their profits.

Any effort to buy up the opium would lead to a huge spike in illicit demand and lead to a re-emergence of opium in Southeast Asia and other areas. It has been fairly simply to create poppies that are optimized for growing in the Americas and are every bit as productive as the Asian varieties.

With over six billion people on the planet, there are a lot of untapped markets out there.

I doubt that we can fix the problem by throwing money at it. We're out of money, anyway.

I'm not saying I have a better idea, I just saying I seriously doubt we can solve it. I don't see any reason to try to socialize the drug trade, it's anarchist capitalism in the wild, it can't be tamed.