UN Warns of Increase in Heroin Overdose Deaths

[seemslikeadream]

Stable prices for heroin and a likely increase in the drug’s purity could lead to an increase in the number of overdose deaths, the UN drug agency warned today.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has alerted health officials globally about the risk, which comes after a survey indicated that opium production in Afghanistan increased by 64% during 2004 as compared to the previous year.

Such increases in the past have lead to a surge in the number of deaths related to the drug, the agency said.

“We know the worldwide supply will exceed demand for illicit heroin in 2005, and that an abundant supply of heroin is likely to result in rising levels of purity and substantial increases in the number of drug-related deaths,” agency director Antonio Maria Costa said.

“This is already happening in northern Russia,” he said.

more
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3898680

[Bono71]

1. Let me try to figure this out...

Drugs are bad.
Drugs are bad if they are from South America.
Drugs are bad if they are from Afghanistan, except when they are helping the economy of that country.
The economies of South America are in relatively poor shape.
Drugs are still bad if they come from South...oh never mind...

[MADem]

2. It's a hideous irony

When the Taliban owned Afghanistan, they had sharply reduced the poppy harvest--in areas controlled by them, there were no poppies. The bulk of the production came from sectors controlled by the Northern Alliance.

Now that "freedom is on the march" in Afghanistan, farmers are now "free" to plant their very best, easiest, cash crop, and they are selling it as fast as they can grow the pretty flowers. And the export levels just keep going up, and up, and up.....

[Bono71]

6. It is unbelievable, isn't it? I usually don't join in the bush bashing

simply because it is too freaking easy (and I agree with everything that is written, obviously). It has been one catastrophe after another with little end in sight. I can't imagine any of the democratic nominees doing a worse job.

[IADEMO2004]

13. Another Catastrophic Success!! Thank you BFEE

[WhiteTara]

17. I wonder if the CIA is still working on their old idiom

guns in drugs out.  Wasn't Ollie North one of the guys who
perfected that scenario?  It certainly was profitable in the
80's, so I am sure that it is working beautifully today (after
all, they've had 26 years to perfect the technique.

[NecessaryOnslaught]

3. "Utilizing drugs to pay for secret wars around the globe"

SOAD: "prison song".

Lemme turn it up. :grr:

[leftofthedial]

4. thank gawd we rescued the poppy fields of Afghanistan

from those heathen liberal commie muslim taliban

[TahitiNut]

5. Translation: "Reduced demand for heroin is a problem."

:wtf:

[Tight_rope]

7. Well...the rich have to have something to do with all that money

Bush* is saving them. You can only drink so much Dom Perignon and pop so many Oxycotin

[seemslikeadream]

8. Russia swept by drugs from Afghanistan’

According to experts’ estimates, about 4 million of Russia’s 144 million people are drug addicts, Russia’s Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev told the parliament.

He said 248,000 drug-related crimes were registered over the first nine months of the year, compared to 220,000 over the same period last year.

“The scope of this social ill is continuing to grow,” Nurgaliyev said. He said that 62 police officers had been detained over the first nine months of the year on suspicion of being involved in drug trafficking.

Alexander Fyodorov, the acting chief of Russia’s drug agency, said that the amount of heroin seized in Russia more than doubled in the first 10 months of this year to 2.9 metric tons (3.2 tons) from 1.4 metric tons (1.5 tons) during the same period last year. Fyodorov said that nearly all heroin flowing to Russia comes from Afghanistan, which has seen a steady rise in drug production. Some 420 metric tons (462 tons) of heroin is expected to be produced in Afghanistan this year, he said.

UN surveys estimate Afghanistan accounted for three-quarters of the world’s opium last year, and the trade brought in US$2.3 billion (...1.7 billion), more than half of the nation’s gross domestic product. ap

more
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_16-12-2004_pg4_22

[parkenyc]

9. I heard that Afghanistan

was the largest source of heroin in the UK last year.

[seemslikeadream]

10. UK heroin fight hit by record opium harvest 2002

UK heroin fight hit by record opium harvest

Most valuable ever poppy crop in Afghanistan shows British-led drugs programme has had only limited impact

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Saturday October 26, 2002
The Guardian

A British-led attempt to curb heroin production in Afghanistan has been overwhelmed by the country's most valuable ever opium poppy harvest, according to a UN crop survey published yesterday.
It says 3,400 metric tons of opium will be produced in Afghanistan this year - higher than the 2,700 tons estimated earlier this year - and higher even than the 2,000-ton harvest before the Taliban banned production.

The survey shows Afghanistan is set to resume its place as the source of 75% of the world's heroin and 90% of Britain's supply.
The UN drug control programme figures are a blow to Tony Blair, who at the Labour party conference two years ago promised to eradicate the opium poppy harvest as part of the war against Afghanistan.
"We act also because the al-Qaida network and the Taliban regime are funded in large part from the drugs trade - 90% of all heroin sold in Britain originates from Afghanistan. Stopping that trade is again directly in our interests," he said.

Britain took the lead role in developing a UN eradication programme this year. Opium production under the Taliban fell to only 185 tons during 2001. In January the interim Afghan government announced a ban on opium poppy cultivation, trafficking and abuse. The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, claimed some early success in destroying almost a third of the country's poppy fields.

...

The UN survey used high resolution satellite pictures and visits by field surveyors to 923 Afghan villages to reach its estimate that opium poppy production this year is even higher than in 2000.
The UN also says the average price for Afghan fresh opium rose to $350 (£235) per kilo in early 2002, and with 74,000 hectares under cultivation and a high yield "the total income for the Afghan opium poppy farmers could reach several hundred million US dollars this year. The value of the 2002 production will then reach a record high, far above earlier years."

...

Roger Howard, the chief executive of Drugscope, the British drugs organisation, said the rise in opium production was even larger than expected. "This is a major concern. If we are to halt the rise in opium production, the in ternational community must fulfil its commitment to help rebuild Afghan society, giving communities and individuals other options. Enforcement on its own is not the solution."

He said it was not possible to say what impact it would have on the British heroin market as it would take two years to filter through and little is known about stockpiles of opium and heroin.
more
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,819638,00.html

[parkenyc]

11. Thanks for the details.

[seemslikeadream]

12. Thanks parkenyc

Afghanistan Regains Its Title As World's Biggest Heroin Dealer
by Andy McSmith June 22, 2003
and Phil Reeves

Afghanistan is still the source of almost all of the heroin sold in London, even though Britain has poured millions into trying to stamp out the war-wrecked country's resurgent drugs production business.

Opium poppies are springing up from the plains to the mountains of Afghanistan in far higher quantities than in the final year of the Taliban, which the US and Britain overthrew, while vowing to end the region's narcotics trade. Opium - from which heroin is extracted - is produced on farms only a few dozen miles from the capital city of Kabul, headquarters to the international effort to end the heroin trade and rebuild the country.

Local Afghans say that bags of heroin are used in lieu of currency in some parts of the lawless countryside where - more than two years after the Taliban was toppled - the US-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai has failed to establish control.

After the war, Britain assumed responsibility for co-ordinating the international effort to crush Afghanistan's opium trade. It is spending £70m over three years on a project to eradicate poppy production by providing Afghan farmers with another livelihood and by training the fledgling and badly under-manned police force. But this bleak picture suggests that its efforts have so far failed to turn the tide.

HM Customs and Excise, which is running a programme in Kabul, has admitted that 95 per cent of the heroin sold on London's streets is still of Afghan origin. This has prompted George Osborne, a Tory MP who sits on the Public Accounts Committee, to call for an investigation into what has been happening to the money.
more
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=49&ItemID=3811

:hi:

[Mokito]

14. Well, that wouldn't be too difficult to imagine,

considering that Afghanistan produces a staggering 80% of the world's heroin supply.

[goforit]

15. Poppy's investments coming to roost.

[seemslikeadream]

16. Ronnie Poppy too!

From Afghanistan to El Salvador
Reagan's Dark Global Legacy
By DENNIS HANS

It is typical of Americans, unlike other peoples, to not truly appreciate someone until he or she passes away. Surely this is the case with our 40th president, Ronald Wilson Reagan.

True, long before he died his name was affixed to a California license plate, an aircraft carrier and a federal building. But all that amounts to small potatoes compared to the honors bestowed years earlier from a host of grateful nations and peoples. As we consider additional tributes to Mr. Reagan, let us recall some of the creative honors dreamed up by our international friends so that they'd never forget the man and his values.

o Afghanistan. "Ronnie Poppy." This opium flower honors President Reagan's contribution to the explosive growth of the Afghan heroin industry in the 1980s through his unconditional support for the most extreme Islamic fundamentalists who were justifiably opposed to the murderous Soviet occupation. When not battling the Red Army or rival guerrillas, or terrorizing civilians and shooting down non-military passenger planes, Reagan's favored fundamentalists cultivated opium, converted it into smack and supplied three-fourths of the junkies of Europe and one-third of the junkies of America. A tip of the Islamist hat to Ronnie for averting his eyes as the horse trade boomed and for refusing to use his considerable leverage to promote moderation or a negotiated settlement, thereby creating the conditions for continued chaos and the eventual emergence of a "failed state," which set the stage for a takeover by the Taliban, who rolled out the red carpet for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, who . . . Well, you know the rest of the story.

more
http://www.counterpunch.org/hans06072004.html