Create an Account
username: password:
 
  MemeStreams Logo

Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007: Executive Summary | United Nations

search

possibly noteworthy
Picture of possibly noteworthy
My Blog
My Profile
My Audience
My Sources
Send Me a Message

sponsored links

possibly noteworthy's topics
Arts
Business
Games
Health and Wellness
Home and Garden
Miscellaneous
  Humor
Current Events
  War on Terrorism
Recreation
Local Information
  Food
Science
Society
  International Relations
  Politics and Law
   Intellectual Property
  Military
Sports
Technology
  Military Technology
  High Tech Developments

support us

Get MemeStreams Stuff!


 
Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007: Executive Summary | United Nations
Topic: Business 6:41 am EDT, Aug 31, 2007

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan is no longer associated with poverty – quite the opposite.

It works like this: the rich buy political protection, so by default, eradication efforts (though hopelessly half-hearted) fall almost exclusively on the poor, who are forced to convert to "cash crops" for which they have neither the scale nor the technology to compete on the open market. Meanwhile, the sanctioned producers more than pick up the slack, and, having eliminated the local competition, reap outsize profits.

In 2007, Afghanistan cultivated 193,000 hectares of opium poppies, an increase of 17% over last year. The amount of Afghan land used for opium is now larger than the corresponding total for coca cultivation in Latin America (Colombia, Peru and Bolivia combined).

Favourable weather conditions produced opium yields (42.5 kg per hectare) higher than last year (37.0 kg/ha). As a result, in 2007 Afghanistan produced an extraordinary 8,200 tons of opium (34% more than in 2006), becoming practically the exclusive supplier of the world’s deadliest drug (93% of the global opiates market). Leaving aside 19th century China, that had a population at that time 15 times larger than today’s Afghanistan, no other country in the world has ever produced narcotics on such a deadly scale.

On aggregate, Afghanistan’s opium production has thus reached a frighteningly new level, twice the amount produced just two years ago.

Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007: Executive Summary | United Nations



 
 
Powered By Industrial Memetics
RSS2.0