cannabisnews.com: Ban On Poppy Farming Virtually Wipes Out Opium 





Ban On Poppy Farming Virtually Wipes Out Opium 
Posted by FoM on February 19, 2001 at 07:18:56 PT
By Kathy Gannon, Associated Press Writer 
Source: State Journal-Register 
U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has virtually wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation in July. A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching most of the nation's largest opium-producing areas and found so few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan this year. 
"We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields,'' said Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier -- a sea of blood-red poppies. A State Department official said Thursday all the information the United States has received so far indicates the poppy crop had decreased, but he did not believe it was eliminated. Last year, Afghanistan produced nearly 4,000 tons of opium, about 75 percent of the world's supply, U.N. officials said. Opium -- the milky substance drained from the poppy plant -- is converted into heroin and sold in Europe and North America. The 2000 output was a world record for opium production, the United Nations said -- more than all other countries combined, including the "Golden Triangle,'' where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet. Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, banned poppy growing before the November planting season and augmented it with a religious edict making it contrary to the tenets of Islam. The Taliban, which has imposed a strict brand of Islam in the 95 percent of Afghanistan it controls, has set fire to heroin laboratories and jailed farmers until they agreed to destroy their poppy crops. The U.N. surveyors, who completed their search this week, crisscrossed Helmand, Kandahar, Urzgan and Nangarhar provinces and parts of two others -- areas responsible for 86 percent of the opium produced in Afghanistan last year, Frahi said in an interview Wednesday. They covered 80 percent of the land in those provinces that last year had been awash in poppies. This year they found poppies growing on barely an acre here and there, Frahi said. The rest -- about 175,000 acres — was clean. "We have to look at the situation with careful optimism,'' said Sandro Tucci of the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna, Austria. He said indications are that no poppies were planted this season and that, as a result, there hasn't been any production of opium -- but that officials would keep checking. The State Department counternarcotics official said the department would make its own estimate of the poppy crop. Information received so far suggests there will be a decrease, but how much is not yet clear, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We do not think by any stretch of the imagination that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been eliminated. But we, like the rest of the world, welcome positive news.'' The Drug Enforcement Administration declined to comment. No U.S. government official can enter Afghanistan because of security concerns stemming from the presence of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden. Poppies are harvested in March and April, which is why the survey was done now. Tucci said it would have been impossible for the poppies to have been harvested already. The areas searched by the U.N. surveyors are the most fertile lands under Taliban control. Other areas, though they are somewhat fertile, have not traditionally been poppy growing areas and farmers are struggling to raise any crops at all because of severe drought. The rest of the land held by the Taliban is mountainous or desert, where poppies could not grow. Karim Rahimi, the U.N. drug control liaison in Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province, said farmers were growing wheat or onions in fields where they once grew poppies. "It is amazing, really, when you see the fields that last year were filled with poppies and this year there is wheat,'' he said. The Taliban enforced the ban by threatening to arrest village elders and mullahs who allowed poppies to be grown. Taliban soldiers patrolled in trucks armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. About 1,000 people in Nangarhar who tried to defy the ban were arrested and jailed until they agreed to destroy their crops. Signs throughout Nangarhar warn against drug production and use, some calling it an "illicit phenomenon.'' Another reads: "Be drug free, be happy.'' Last year, poppies grew on 48,800 acres of land in Nangarhar province. According to the U.N. survey, poppies were planted on only 17 acres there this season and all were destroyed by the Taliban. "The Taliban have done their work very seriously,'' Frahi said. But the ban has badly hurt farmers in one of the world's poorest countries, shattered by two decades of war and devastated by drought. Ahmed Rehman, who shares less than three acres in Nangarhar with his three brothers, said the opium he produced last year on part of the land brought him $1,100. This year, he says, he will be lucky to get $300 for the onions and cattle feed he planted on the entire parcel. "Life is very bad for me this year,'' he said. "Last year I was able to buy meat and wheat and now this year there is nothing.'' But Rehman said he never considered defying the ban. "The Taliban were patrolling all the time. Of course I was afraid. I did not want to go to jail and lose my freedom and my dignity,'' he said, gesturing with dirt-caked hands. Shams-ul-Haq Sayed, an officer of the Taliban drug control office in Jalalabad, said farmers need international aid. "This year was the most important for us because growing poppies was part of their culture, and the first years are always the most difficult,'' he said. Tucci said discussions are under way on how to help the farmers. Western diplomats in Pakistan have suggested the Taliban is simply trying to drive up the price of opium they have stockpiled. The State Department official also said Afghanistan could do more by destroying drug stockpiles and heroin labs and arresting producers and traffickers. Frahi dismissed that as "nonsense'' and said it is drug traffickers and shopkeepers who have stockpiles. Two pounds of opium worth $35 last year are now worth as much as $360, he said. Mullah Amir Mohammed Haqqani, the Taliban's top drug official in Nangarhar, said the ban would remain regardless of whether the Taliban received aid or international recognition. "It is our decree that there will be no poppy cultivation. It is banned forever in this country,'' he said. "Whether we get assistance or not, poppy growing will never be allowed again in our country.'' Complete Title: Ban On Poppy Farming Virtually Wipes Out Opium In AfganistanJalalabad, AfghanistanSource: State Journal-Register (IL)Author: Kathy Gannon, Associated Press Writer Published: February 16, 2001Copyright: 2001 The State Journal-RegisterAddress: P.O. Box 219, Springfield, IL 62705-0219Fax: (217) 788-1551Contact: letters sj-r.comWebsite: http://www.sj-r.com/CannabisNews Articles - Talibanhttp://cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=taliban
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Comment #7 posted by Kevin Hebert on February 20, 2001 at 11:01:07 PT:
Dan, you read my mind.
This article was disgusting. While I do not in any way advocate using opiates, to laud the Taliban for stopping opium production is like giving a mass murderer a medal for not robbing a bank. Afghanistan is one of the world's most oppressive societies. It is the hiding place of Osama Bin Laden, the world's worst terrorist. There is no such thing as freedom in Afghanistan. If anything, the Taliban's movement to stop poppy production is yet another sign that something is very wrong with the "War on Drugs."
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Comment #6 posted by kaptinemo on February 19, 2001 at 10:47:35 PT:
End poppy farming? Another pipe dream
Here's a news flash - that is, if you didn't know already.Ever wonder why the early drug tests went bonkers - and still do - after you've eaten a roll with poppy seeds?Because the very seeds you ate came from the papaver somniferum plant. The opium poppy.And many of the seeds that you ate this morning are not sterile. They can germinate. And grow.That's right, folks, a little known fact is that you can indeed, as FF has rightly pointed out, grow opium poppies. The DEA is running around in circles, trying to intimidate seed companies to cease providing them, trying to BS them by saying they are 'illegal' (they aren't). The rule of thumb is that you can grow them...just not cut them to harvest their contents. But who needs seed companies? The seeds in your own grocery store spice rack will do just fine.Mind you, I am not advocating this; I hold the purveyors of hard drugs in the same degree of contempt as I do tobacco companies and distilleries. They are all poison merchants. I merely point out to all and sundry just one more rank absurdity which perforce accompanies the DrugWar.To destroy opium production completely, planet-wide, would require the ethnobotanical equivalent of genocide. And as Dan has pointed out, it would also require a degree of tyranny that would cause most Americans to march on Washington to prevent.This is just one more exercise in futility; the production will, as it has always, move elsewhere to nations like Myanmar (Burma) which are a good deal more realistic...or just plain greedy. Squeeze the balloon here, it bulges there. Over and over and over... 
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Comment #5 posted by Dan B on February 19, 2001 at 10:20:11 PT:
Ah, the Wonder of Totalitarian Control
This article's message is this: who cares if the Taliban government has made it legal to rape any woman, then kill her for having sex outside of marriage; who cares if the Taliban government is perhaps the most harsh dictatorship known to have existed anywhere at any time (including Nazi Germany), who cares if they murder women for exposing any part of their bodies, even if a strong wind comes up and blows the hem of their attire from their ankles--dammit, these folks have managed to stop opium production, so they MUST be wonderful!Yessir, the United States could take a lesson from these folks. Many in America think it be great to have a society so tightly allied with religious fundamentalism that even mentioning a policy other than official government policies can land a person in prison. I bet there are many in the American government who would like a society where people fear death on a daily basis because their beliefs do not include the right to kill one's wife or daughter for any reason whatsoever. Here are some links to information about this supposedly wonderful Taliban government:http://www.afghan-web.com/politics/chronology.htmlhttp://www.aia-world.net/From Amnesty International:http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/countries/indx311.htmFrom Human Rights Watch:http://www.hrw.org/hrw/reports98/afghan/This one will burn you up. It's about the UN's cooperation with the Taliban government:http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9609/29/afghanistan/This article is disgracefully irresponsible. The reason people won't grow opium in Afghanistan is because they know they will be dismembered if they do.Dan B
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Comment #4 posted by freedom fighter on February 19, 2001 at 10:11:14 PT
One can even grow
a poppy flower in the basement using hydroponic system. 
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on February 19, 2001 at 08:26:04 PT
Just a note
I've been looking for news and just can't find anything important enough to post but I'll get more articles up throughout the day when I find them. I didn't fall asleep on the job just can't find news! That does happen. Sometimes I think the news takes a vacation on the weekends. It's like stop the world the weekends here! LOL!
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on February 19, 2001 at 08:19:27 PT
A Comment
Hi Dr. Russo, What I thought about is heroin will become more expensive and when that happens it seems more crimes will happen because they'll need more money to buy the drug. I could be wrong but I don't think I am.
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Comment #1 posted by Ethan Russo, MD on February 19, 2001 at 08:10:35 PT:
Predictions
My suspicions are that:1) The poppies are not really gone.2) Someone in Afghanistan will profit mightily.3) Any shortfall there will be offset by increased production elsewhere.4) Cheap high-grade heroine will remain available on the streeet in the USA.
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