Peace With Poppies

[Paregoric Kid]

Peace With Poppies

Opium in Afghanistan

Jacob Sullum from the November 2009 issue

“The farmers are not our enemy,” the State Department’s Richard Holbrooke declared in June, referring to Afghans who grow opium poppies. Since the U.S. government’s official goal is to wipe out their livelihood, the farmers could be forgiven for misunderstanding. To reassure those who interpret ripping up their crops as a hostile act, Holbrooke said, “we’re going to phase out eradication.”
Acknowledging a truth that the Bush administration steadfastly refused to concede, Holbrooke, the special U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, told the Associated Press that “eradication is a waste of money.” Although “it might destroy some acreage,” he explained, “it didn’t reduce the amount of money the Taliban got by one dollar.” Indeed, “it just helped the Taliban” by driving farmers into the arms of the theocratic rebels.
Although Afghanistan’s counternarcotics minister responded to Holbrooke’s remarks by insisting that “our strategy’s perfect,” he may be the only person outside the Taliban who thinks so. Last year, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Afghanistan produced 40 times as much opium as it did in 2001, the year of the U.S. invasion. It supplied 93 percent of the world’s illicit opium, the export value of which was equivalent to one-third of the country’s gross domestic product.
Instead of seeking to wipe out poppy cultivation, the Obama administration plans to focus its anti-drug activities in Afghanistan on laboratories and traffickers. Although that approach may alienate fewer farmers, it is not likely to have a noticeable impact on heroin consumption. The UNODC reports that between 1998 and 2007—the U.N.’s official “Decade Against Drug Abuse”—estimated illegal production of opium more than doubled worldwide, while the average U.S. retail price for a gram of heroin, adjusted for purity and inflation, fell from $597 to $364.

[nick]

"Our strategey is perfect." Yeah the Afghan counter-narcotics minister is probably one of the biggest dope dealers on the planet.

[Fat Pie]

Afghanistan controls 90% of the world's heroin market. So much for the 'War on Drugs'. And what were those prices quoted at the end? $597 to $364, for a gram!?!?!?

Maybe they missed out the decimal point after the second number, $59.7 to $36.4 perhaps. Either that or the state department is wildly overestimating the financial means of the average junkie.

[Suboxer]

I notice it said, "adjusted for purity." This probably means they are talking about a gram of raw 100% pure, and that purity fluctuated over time. A gram of powder goes for about $100 around here. Assuming that powder is about 25-30% pure, those prices aren't far off. Although the government is known to "estimate" the street value of drugs at outrageous figures.

Like when five hundred kilos of weed are seized, they break it down like it was KB, at $20 a gramme, for the whole lot, to get the "street price." No one with 500 kis is selling grammes. Probably not under a ki. More likely 10 or more ki minimum purchase, and the price of drugs always goes down with a quantity buy, making the true value, not the end-of-the-line-to-the-user value, more like $.50 a gramme.

[Fat Pie]

Good point, that figure just caught my eye. I would think that that talking about anything but street purity/prices would be the only relevant point, because the DEA can monitor that without too much hassle, but higher up the chain it must be much harder to infiltrate, considering how much drugs are traded across the globe on a daily basis with seemingly no-one and no-thing able to stop it.