Drugs worth $350 million seized in Afghanistan-NATO

[bemildred]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - Afghan and foreign troops seized drugs worth an estimated $350 million in southern Afghanistan, including some 100 kg (220 lbs) of heroin, in one of the biggest narcotics busts since the decade-old war began, the coalition said on Wednesday.

Troops raided a drugs factory in Helmand province on Monday and discovered three laboratories suspected of manufacturing illicit narcotics to finance insurgents, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.

In addition to the heroin, they discovered 6,870 liters of morphine solution, 80 kg of opium and 12,065 kg of chemicals used to process the drugs.

The drug trade funnels an estimated $100 million to $400 million a year to the Taliban through levies on farmers and traffickers, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/28/us-afghanistan-drugs-idUSTRE78R2TO20110928

[DontTreadOnMe]

1. The $350 million number is outragous

I am not a drug dealer. I did a quick Google for the price of heroin.

It stated a pound of heroin is about $50-60K, and that is selling it as small half gram bundles. (and probably an inflated number as well!)

so 220 lbs x $60,000 = $13,200,000

so, for the article, let's round up $13 million to $350 million, because it sounds more dramatic.

But back in reality land, the drugs were probably worth about $2-3 million to some Afghanistan drug lord. Not a small amount, but let's get the numbers straight for once.
I am willing to bet there is more than 220 lbs of heroin on the streets in just about every major US city right now... so they captured a ONE DAY SUPPLY, for ONE US city.

[snooper2]

2. That's all before it's cut...Figure a gram of cut heroin at $30-40

then go from there..

So first off, at least double the amount of heroin seized, which is still crazy...

Most is probably 15-25% pure if you're lucky-

[bemildred]

3. This is butt covering.

We have to explain why it is that ten years on we cannot subdue these Afghani tribesmen with all our expensive hi-tech hardware.

[avaistheone1]

4. You raise an excellent point.

k&r

[bemildred]

5. It could be an attempt to show "progress" or "success" too.

But asking why we are still bogged down there ten years on seems more to the point to me. I thought we were supposed to be doing "full spectrum dominance" by now. One thing that used to annoy me when I worked in "defence" was the strange attraction in the management/officer classes for utter bullshit if it had a hi-tech veneer.

[DLnyc]

9. You are right, 320 million is way too high.

And thank you for adding a reality check.

220 lbs on the street of one city is in the ballpark I think. At 450 grams per pound, that comes to around 100,000 grams. A gram of (relatively pure, presumably) heroin could keep an average addict going quite a while (several days, I think), so you would need a few hundred thousand addicts to go through that in one day. This site: http://www.policyalmanac.org/crime/archive/heroin.shtml gives an estimate of 750,000 to 1,000,000 hardcore addicts in the US, so some major cities probably have a few hundred thousand addicts.

I suppose the people who write these articles could do the same sort of research, but they apparently don't.

[bongbong]

6. All for show

Occasionally somebody has to take a fall with .1% of his inventory to make it look like we're making progress.

Poppy growth has increased a great deal since the Taliban were forced out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan

[Botany]

7. Killed bin Laden & won the war on drugs too

Time to declare victory and go home.

[libodem]

8. Oh goodie

Now, it can finance the CIA.

[Fool Count]

10. Great, another $350 million taken out of Afghanistan economy.

As if the country wasn't impoverished enough. That's another $350 million of US aid
needed to be injected to keep it afloat. Good work.