UN: Afghan Opium Production Spreading Like Cancer

[LynneSin]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=3&u=/nm/20031029/wl_nm/crime_afghanistan_opium_dc

VIENNA (Reuters) - Opium cultivation is spreading like a cancer in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and risks transforming the world's leading supplier into a state of narco-terrorists and drug cartels, a U.N. survey said Wednesday.

Opium poppy cultivation is fanning out to areas it has never been seen in before, the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its Afghanistan Opium survey for 2003 -- the first conducted in cooperation with the national government.

High prices for opium have lured poor farmers away from conventional farming, spreading poppy cultivation to 28 of Afghanistan's 32 provinces from 18 provinces four years ago.


Great, now we have another Columbia on our hands. The only good thing that the Taliban did when in power was to destroy major amounts of the poppy fields in Afghanistan (since drug use is against Islamic principles). You'd think the US could continue doing that instead of now having more cheap heroin flowing into our country

:shrug:

[slackmaster]

1. How many thousands of years have poppies been cultivated there?

Opium poppy cultivation is fanning out to areas it has never been seen in before...

Nice weasly use of passive voice to avoid admitting that their data MAY not be complete.

[truthisfreedom]

2. opium production is necessary to fund black projects.

drug money has traditionally been used by the CIA to provide funds for projects that they prefer to operate "off the books."

[Wwagsthedog]

3. How can we have a drug war without drugs?

n/t