As determined as I was to see the poppy fields of Afghanistan it appears as though it is not going to happen. Besides the fact that I couldn’t convince anybody to take me due to safety concerns as most fields are in dangerous areas. With 2 Americans kidnapped or killed just outside of Kabul yesterday & 75 deaths this month & the fact that NATO troops are losing 20+ soldiers here a week it may have been a blessing. It turns out that I missed the poppy harvest by a few months, taking risks is all part of the package but I didn’t feel like getting shot at to see a dirt field.
Poppy production is allowed here. For those who do not know poppy sap is the base that is used to manufacture heroin & Afghanistan which is the world’s largest producer of heroin. Banning poppy production or eradication as it was known was originally implemented by Coalition governments & only pissed off the locals as growing poppies is their only means to survive. Consequently a decision was made to allow the farmers to grow the poppy crops & try to stop heroin from being exported a policy known as interdiction. The Americans originally tried to encourage locals to grow other crops for a fraction of the profit however they were unsuccessful because growing apricots is obviously far less lucrative than growing poppies used to make heroin. Furthermore with Afghan president Karzai’s brother being one of the largest exporter of heroin in Afghanistan one wonders how difficult it is to stop exportation or how hard they’re even trying. In addition coalition forces have had to align themselves with drug lords in order to defeat the Muslim radicals who also fund the purchasing of weapons through exporting heroin.
The skin of the poppy pod is slightly cut horizontally with a knife, usually in the afternoon so nothing like moisture can spoil it. This allows a kind of sap to form from these cuts. Incisions are made three or four times at intervals over two to three days, and each time the poppy bleeds it turns into a dry to a sticky brown resin, which usually collected the following morning. An acre of poppies can three to five kilograms of raw opium which of course what is used to make heroin. Crude laboratories in the field turn the opium into a morphine base. The sticky, brown paste, of morphine base is then pressed into bricks and sun-dried, and can either be smoked, prepared into other forms of narcotic or processed into heroin
Coming from Spain other than the insane drunkenness we saw at the San Fermin festival and celebration of Spain’s World Cup win. Neither Christie & I saw any public signs of drug use. Spain was one of the first modern European countries to decriminalize marijuana and treats drug consumption as a health problem as opposed to a criminal offense. Spain and Italy do not jail people caught with drugs for personal use Spain’s marijuana policy actually encourages marijuana smokers to grow their own weed. Personal consumption and home cultivation have been decriminalized, but buying or selling drugs remains a criminal offense. Drug dealers in Spain are also eligible for unemployment benefits.
The experiment of decriminalization has already been successfully tried and the results were remarkable. In 2001 the Portuguese government decriminalized the use and possession of heroin cocaine, marijuana, LSD and other illicit street drugs. The Portuguese focused on education, treatment and prevention instead of jailing people. Five years later, the number of deaths from drug overdoses went from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles used to inject heroin, went from 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006. From a historical perspective much like cocaine which was used in Coca Cola until 1903 in 1910 heroin was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough medicine for children if you can believe that!
The insanity of the current situation is that our tax dollars are assisting the producers of heroin in Afghanistan & then using more of our public money catching, prosecuting & jailing the dealers and addicts back home. All of this begs the question why have we not reformed our drug laws? As it currently sits right now the illegality of heroin drives up the prices for the drug & is funding those fighting Canadians here in Afghanistan and buying weapons used to kill Canadians & good Afghans who want legitimate progress.
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