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Heroin drought is no quick fix for the drug blight - SMH 4/12/01

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XSI11V

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The sudden scarcity of heroin is not necessarily caused by the Federal Government's 'get tough' policy, writes Alex Wodak.
After several decades of unsuccessful attempts to reduce drug supplies, we finally have a scarcity of heroin in Australia. But this has not turned out to be the nirvana we have long been promised.
There are conflicting explanations about why it has occurred: either heroin production has been reduced in source countries, or law enforcement has improved. Understanding which explanation is likely to be true is a pointer to what should be done to tackle the continuing blight of illicit drugs in our community.
Full story: http://www.smh.com.au/news/0112/04/opinion/opinion2.html
i thought it is pretty funny Johnnie Howard is claiming the drought is a direct result of his "get tough" policy
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ahahaha
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~sleep is for the week~
 
Personally I get the feeling that when certain middle east countries allow the sale of their 4000 tons{1} of stockpiled opium, for whatever reasons... to fund war efforts or repair their countries, the drought will be over.
{1} - Press Clips by Cynthia Cotts: Tales of the Afghan Drug Trade - Opium for the Masses
Some final facts to consider: The Taliban have at least 40 opium warehouses in Afghanistan, as well as stockpiles in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and elsewhere. U.S. sources have said they will try to find the stockpiles using satellite imagery, and the Pentagon recently moved to buy the rights to every photo it commissions from a commercial satellite company—effectively preventing the war photos from ever becoming public.
Does the U.S. have a secret plan to seize raw opium as war booty? A DEA spokesperson told the Voice last week that "a lot" of the Taliban stockpiles had already been "seized," a report the Pentagon would not confirm or deny. On the contrary, Golden's sources said the U.S. has "scant information" about the location of the stockpiles.
Make no mistake—raw opium is a valuable commodity. Just ask the late U.S. drug czar Harry Anslinger. During World War II, Anslinger quietly built his own opium stockpile to assuage the fears of the pharmaceutical industry. At the time, the U.S. bought most of its legal opium from Yugoslavia and Turkey. But as Anslinger assured the industry in 1941, there was always "high-grade" and "abundant" opium to be had from Afghanistan. Sixty years later, there still is.
Click to expand...
BigTrancer
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Load universe into cannon. Aim at brain. Shoot.
 
All true... The Taliban under its regime banned opium poppy cultivation on behalf of its citizens as an extention of its radical Islamic religious law, and recieved around US$45 million from the USA as aid for their efforts. The move was another step in crippling Afghanistan ecinomically, yet it probably served a broader purpose... To raise prices and place a monopoly on opium productuion into the hands of a select few. Undoubtedly the Taliban would have been stockpiling the stuff for a rainy day. Before the conflict disrupted activities, Osama had been bankrolling his operations for some time through gun-running and an international trade in opium, straight from Afghanistan which is why the US freezing his 'legitimate' assets in Saudi Arabia had little real effect.
Now, with the Taliban all but deposed, it will be interesting to see wether the highly factionalised Northern Alliance will wish to continue a ban on opium, or wether this will be (most likely) unenforced considering the state of the place and Afghanistan will once again become a major supplier of the world narcotics trade.
 
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