"The release of the poll yesterday comes two days after the United Nations' latest audit of the poppy farming trade found that Afghanistan's production of opium, the key ingredient in heroin, has now reached record levels in the six years that western nations have controlled the country. "
Now that production is in place, expect a major surge in heroin in the US. More potent and less expensive than ever before.
As it is .. (not my thing at all but) someone here in the mid-west tried to sell me an ounce of opium for $25. I was floored at how cheap this seemed.
Who wins this battle? the Taliban.
THIS JUST IN
( 1 ) NO 'SILVER BULLET' FOR AFGHAN OPIUM TRADE
Pubdate: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 Source: National Post ( Canada ) Copyright: 2007 Southam Inc. Author: Mike Blanchfield, CanWest News Service
OTTAWA - Britain's top diplomat in Canada has dismissed a poll, commissioned by the international think-tank that is championing the legalization of Afghanistan's contentious opium poppy crop, which shows that Canadians overwhelmingly support for the use of Afghan opium for medicinal purposes.
"It is a surprise that people reach for silver bullets," British High Commissioner Anthony Cary said in an interview yesterday.
Mr. Cary was responding to the release of an Ipsos Reid survey of 1,000 Canadians, conducted on behalf of the Senlis Council, which found that nearly eight in 10 Canadians ( 79% ) want Prime Minister Stephen Harper to back an international pilot project that would help transform Afghanistan's illicit opium cultivation into a legal way of providing codeine and other legitimate pain medications to the international market.
The release of the poll yesterday comes two days after the United Nations' latest audit of the poppy farming trade found that Afghanistan's production of opium, the key ingredient in heroin, has now reached record levels in the six years that western nations have controlled the country.
[snip]
This week, the UN said for the first time that the illicit trade is directly linked to funding of the Taliban insurgency that threatens Canada and its military allies.
The Canadian government, along with its Western allies, rejects the legalization of the opium trade, in part because the Afghan government in Kabul views it as un-Islamic.
[snip]
Continues: mapinc.org |
