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Afghan Heroin Trade - another similarity to the Vietnam War [and more!]
Afghan Heroin - similiar to the Vietnam heroin trade
Date: 8/28/2007 1:35:23 PM ( 17 y ) ... viewed 2572 times We don't hear anything about how the Afghan poppy crop heroin is distributed, but someone must have an idea.
The one tidbit we were allowed to hear is that it makes it's way, eventually, to places like Vancouver's east side, but only because they warn users there that the heroin might be more pure than they are used to [can't have our addicts dropping like flies or it would raise an outcry, plus the fact that they are the best customers].
Another thing we DO know is that the Afghan poppy crop production has increased significantly since the Taliban were ousted and the western military began occupying that nation.
President Bush has been comparing Iraq to the Vietnam war, to remind the public of the horrific massacre of locals if when the USA military forces pull out of a war that they could not finish. There is another comparison too - a lot of heroin came to America during that occupation of Veitnam, and there it is again in Afghanistan.
One little realised fact of the Vietnam heroin trade was that despite the tons and tons of heroin coming from there to north american cities, NOT ONE PERSON WAS EVER CHARGED with trafficing, producing, or growing that heroin from Vietnam [only the low level dealers and users of it in America were charged]. Meaning, to my mind, that the upper echelon drug trafficers and producers were protected. Surely if they had wanted to slow the importation of heroin into N.A., they could have busted one drug production facility, caught one planeload of heroin coming in, or at least caught one dealer selling into American markets.
A similiarly stunning protection of hard drug trafficing having the protection of American military was the 'cocaine coup' in Bolivia in the early 1980s, which was exposed in great detail in Michael Levine's "Big White Lies" book [which is still available in some libraries if you ask - I read it this spring]. Levine's book also raised this question of why Vietnam heroin was not getting any attention from the War on Drugs.
Okay, so thats all getting to be a bit much to swallow. It goes against everything we think we know about the War on Drugs. They jailed so many people for heroin, the harshest sentences were given for mere possession of heroin, it was one of 'the hard drugs'. It seemed that having anything to do with heroin would mean you are the worst kind of enemy of civilisation, and a threat to the American Dream. And then I try to tell you that the biggest players in that game were being protected? No way!!!
Thats what I thought too, at first, but look at the reality of it - not one Vietnamese, or American who worked with them, were ever busted in the 60's and 70's despite all that CIA intelligence gathering, and military presence, to do the job or arresting people involved in the Vietnam heroin trade.
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part 2
I found out first hand that there has been a change in how doctors in British Columbia, Canada - the biggest per capita user of heroin of any Canadian province - are prescribing morphine, the synthetic version of heroin [opiates]. "Less", thats the change. Or none - unless you have cancer, the College of Physicians ans Surgeons in B.C. is demanding that doctors stop prescribing morphine to patients. This includes people like me who have been getting prescription morphine for many years and still have the same pains as when I started getting the prescription in the first place. The doctors/college offer no help for withdrawals, they offer nothing at all to help us with pains other than pharmaceuticals such as muscle relaxants, anti-depressants, and so on - but no 'opiates', period. After 14 years [yup!] of taking morphine, and being well over 40 yrs old now, as I am, it is considered practically impossible to just quit it. Thats what I am facing though. This weekend!!
Now do you see where I am going with this? - if I cannot get the prescribed morphine, I just might have to turn to street heroin to survive*[1]. That would help create a market for the Afghan heroin, would it not? And the timing - Canadian troops enter Afghanistan to oust the Taliban in 2003, and the new rules for prescribing morphine came about in 2005. The Afghan poppy crop production went up to 610 tons in 2006, which they say would make about 1200 tons of [75% cut] heroin for street sales. The value would be enormous. To who, exactly?
NOT ONE HIGH-LEVEL PLAYER IN THE AFGHAN HEROIN TRADE HAS BEEN CHARGED or ARRESTED.
Just like with Vietnam heroin in the 60's and 70's. Another similarity, but PresBush didn't mention this one.
Eventually, it did become known that the Vietnamese heroin was brought home to America in the body bags of the many dead USA forces killed over there. The military was bringing it home. Nobody is asking about the Canadian or American military in Afghanistan might be doing the same thing, nobody is looking, nobody being caught. Well, maybe a few of the street level dealers? Not even them this time, not in Canada. That just might raise publicity, better to let the wheels turn, let the heroin flow, rake in the $millions while there is military protection and transport. These are the good times, let it roll.
Who is benefitting from all the Afghan poppy crops that sprang up when the Taliban was ousted? Farmers get a little, it is the best cash crop they could possibly grow, but it is miniscule compared to the eventual values involved. Buyers of the 'poppy paste', from the little labs that process the poppy crops, are less well known - maybe Afghan warlords and politicians. From there, it is turned into heroin somewhere, but not a word has been uttered about where that might be, or who is doing it.*[3] Someone is raking in big bucks, and someone is providing protection in the Afghan heroin trade.
None of those high-level players have been busted, and the only 'resistance' to producing heroin in Afghanistan has come in the form of some 'poppy crop eradication' teams, but the huge increases in Afghan poppy crops tells us that it is just for show, for American television audiences, so they [we] will continue to believe that the War on Drugs is actually trying to stop drug trafficing [its not].
part 3
There is a body called "The International Narcotics Control Board", of whom a spokesperson was interviewed last night on television news in Canada. She says that group is calling for legalisation of the opium trade. That would not be good for the players who are now profitting from the prohibition that allows for the current situation to continue. Higher prices and monopolisation of the trade can only come about under prohibition. I was very surprised that this interview got on public media at all, and of course she could not come out and point the finger at the military involved in Afghanistan now. She is employed at Georgetown University, and admits that "opium is badly needed in the world now", as medicine, for pain. Yes, there is a legitimate need for opiates.
A legitimate need, for people like....ME?? Am I really being used, and abused [as in being under-prescribed] in all this? It is worth noting that for nearly 100 years of prescribing morphine for pain patients in north america, the standard has allways been to increase the prescription by either 25% or 30mg. each 6 mos. to deal with the tolerance that develops to opiate type drugs.
That was precisely the way I was prescribed to - 30 mg increases every 6 mos. - for 10 years. Then my doctor in BC asked me to begin reducing my amount taken, starting in about 2003. I changed doctors, and the best that some of them offer is to not decrease it, but no way can I get an increase. If they dare to do it, they get fined, or possibly will lose their 'triplicate prescription privileges' [to prescribe narcotic drugs]. Morphine has been a necessary and legitimate medical tool for 100 years, and for me for almost 15 years now. Asking us to reduce, or stop altogether, is assinine. There is no medical basis for this, nothing to indicate that it is a justifyable method for dealing with pain patients. We are left twisting in the wind, or worse - death during withdrawals, or suicides... and nobody is keeping track to see what the effect of this new directive from the College of Phys. and Surgeons is having on people in pain.
I am going to run out of my presription this weekend, and my finances are just too thin to cover the days until my next refill. This is the first time I have not been able to manage to buy my way around the stubborn prescription protocols here now. [Don't tell anyone I buy it sometimes, ok? - I could get in trouble with my doc, but I think it is prudent to tell this now, before the weekend comes] .
No signature this time.
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Notes -
* [1] - and I do mean survive: many addicts in my situation commit suicide during withdrawals. The official statistics say that deaths from opiate withdrawals are quite low, less than 1%, but maybe thats because we kill ourselves before we perish? Not surprisingly, nobody keeps track of how many suicides occur during withdrawals from opiates. Those do not count as 'deaths from withdrawing from opiates', only heart attacks and s on count for that statistic. Suicides will be explained as"he was depressed'.
*[2] even at the $50 a gram the mid-level level dealers pay the big boys for their heroin.
{ 28 gms per ounce, 16 oz in a pound, 2000 pounds in a ton.... = $896.000 per ton X 610 tons = $546,560,000 [$500 million]
*[3] [who benefits?] The CIA [as was the case in Bolivia's cocaine coup] is a likely guess, or any of the American War on Drugs outfits, or with so many private contracters in the area, it could be some of those [a 'Haliburton Heroin Division' sounds so whacky, but this is one crazy situation and it could be almost anyone]. Someone knows, and nobody is being investigated, so it must be under the protection of American or Canadian military, intelligence, law enforcement, etc..
PS - it should be noted that for me, I THRIVE when I have sufficient morphine - I can ride my bicycle, I can be active, I keep clean, I do the dishes, I am not depressed, not curled up in a stupour like Reefer Madness and the War on Drugs might have you believe. Without it, I will never be'ok', not after all these years.
AND - when I get my prescription, or have extra money, I DO NOT take more - I stay steadily at the same dose, with the gradual increases described above. I know that if I take a lot one day, it will not work the next day, and my tolerance level will be way up there suddenly. I am respectfull of this drug. I depend on it, I thrive with it. Maybe you have never heard of that before - there are those junkies who spoil the reputation of legitimate opiate use, but thats not 'all of us'.
The War on Drugs is now a War on ME, and I never hurt anyone.
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