Afghanistan's Opium Trail

[Oscar Knight]

Afghan Opium Cultivation and Production Seen Rising

www.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/world/asia/afghan-opium-cultivation-and-production-seen-rising.html?_r=0

The amount of land given over to opium in 2013 was 209,000 hectares. The potential production from that is estimated to be more than annual global demand, according to the head of the UN office for Drugs and Crime in Kabul, Jean-Luc Lemahieu.

After rising sharply in the years after the Taliban successfully stopped production, the harvest last peaked in 2007 and is expected to continue rising.

Mr Lemahieu said that the rise since 2010 was caused principally by what he called a "hot political market" - uncertainty over the process of transition from US control. That uncertainty will continue with the end of foreign combat operations and the presidential election next year.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24919056

[Oscar Knight]

Opium production in Afghanistan

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan

[Oscar Knight]

Opium

Opium (poppy tears, lachryma papaveris) is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum). Opium contains approximately 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes the alkaloid codeine and its similarly structured cousin thebaine. It also contains non-analgesic alkaloids such as papaverine and noscapine. The traditional, labor-intensive, method of obtaining the latex is to scratch ("score") the immature seed pods (fruits) by hand; the latex leaks out and dries to a sticky yellowish residue that is later scraped off, and dehydrated. The word "meconium" (derived from the Greek for "opium-like", but now used to refer to infant stools) historically referred to related, weaker preparations made from other parts of the poppy or different species of poppies.

The production of opium itself has not changed since ancient times. Through selective breeding of the Papaver somniferum plant, the content of the phenanthrene alkaloids morphine, codeine, and to a lesser extent thebaine, has been greatly increased. In modern times, much of the thebaine, which often serves as the raw material for the synthesis for hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and other semi-synthetic opiates, originates from extracting Papaver orientale or Papaver bracteatum.

Opium for illegal use is often converted into heroin, which is less bulky, making it easier to smuggle, and which multiplies its potency to approximately twice that of morphine. Heroin can be taken orally, by intravenous injection, intranasally, or smoked (vaporized) and inhaled.

READ MORE :

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium

[Oscar Knight]

"Afghanistan is the world's top cultivator of the poppy, from which Opium and heroin are produced."

www.worldbulletin.net/haber/126993/afghanistan-struggles-against-opium-production