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Simplepowa
In Pursuit of Knowledge


Registered: 03/06/09
Posts: 4,310
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The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is
#19115029 - 11/10/13 01:54 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is growing
Posted: Monday, November 04, 2013 - By Ernesto Londono
In its latest progress report on Afghanistan to the U.S. Congress, the Pentagon warned that the 2013 poppy harvest was expected to be "considerably" bigger than the 2012 yield as a result of warmer temperatures early in the season, the drawdown of NATO troops and the high price of poppies.
A member of the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan in Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, showing seized heroin. Each bag contains a street value worth $112,000 of heroin rocks. Courtesy of SAC Neil Chapman (RAF)/Wikimedia Commons WPLogo
The United States is withdrawing troops from Afghanistan having lost its battle against the country's narcotics industry, marking one of the starkest failures of the 2009 strategy the Obama administration pursued in an effort to turn around the war.
Despite a U.S. investment of nearly $7 billion since 2002 to combat it, the country's opium market is booming, propelled by steady demand and an insurgency that has assumed an increasingly hands-on role in the trade, according to law enforcement officials and counternarcotics experts. As the war economy contracts, opium poppies, which are processed into heroin, are poised to play an ever larger role in the country's economy and politics, undercutting two key U.S. goals: fighting corruption and weakening the link between the insurgency and the drug trade.
The Afghan army opted this spring for the first time in several years not to provide security to eradication teams in key regions, forgoing a dangerous mission that has long embittered rural Afghans who depend on the crop for their livelihoods.
Experts say that, in the end, efforts over the past decade to rein in cultivation were stymied by entrenched insecurity in much of the country, poverty, and the ambivalence — and at times collusion — of the country's ruling class.
With a presidential election just months away, political will for anti-drug initiatives is weak among members of the Afghan elite, many of whom have become increasingly dependent on the proceeds of drugs as foreign funding dries up, said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, who heads the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Afghanistan.
"Money is less and less available within the licit economy," he said. "The real danger is the weakened resistance to corruption and to involvement in a distorted political economy, which weakens your resistance to collusion with the enemy."
As U.S. forces have withdrawn from Afghanistan — there are roughly 51,000 U.S. troops left in the country, down from a peak of 100,000 — insurgents have fought particularly hard to reclaim lost ground in Helmand province, the epicenter of Afghanistan's poppy industry, U.S. military officials have said.
In its latest progress report on Afghanistan to Congress, the Pentagon warned that the 2013 poppy harvest was expected to be "considerably" bigger than the 2012 yield as a result of warmer temperatures early in the season, the drawdown of NATO troops and the high price of poppies.
The July report characterized the reach of counternarcotics efforts by the Afghan government and its foreign partners as "small but not insignificant." The report noted that demand remains high, drug smuggling networks remain resilient and "insurgent penetration of that market is extensive and expanding."
The UNODC is scheduled to release its yearly Afghan opium survey report next week. Experts and Western diplomats in Kabul have said they expect the report to show a dramatic expansion of cultivation from 2012, when the agency estimated that 154,000 hectares (380,542 acres) of land were used to harvest poppy.
U.S. officials say they have established a competent, well-trained Afghan counternarcotics police agency and a special drug court to discourage the trade. But the long-term sustainability of those efforts is uncertain as the West reassesses spending levels in Afghanistan after 2014 — when the U.S. combat mission is due to end — and continues to shift increasing responsibility for security to the Afghans.
Haroon Rashid Sherzad, Afghanistan's deputy counternarcotics minister, said getting at the root causes of Afghanistan's drug problem would take a generation and vastly expanded regional cooperation.
"The concern I have is whether the international community realizes the importance of this problem for global instability and security," he said in an interview, singling out regional neighbors, in particular. "They should understand that the drug economy is fueling terrorism, destabilizing the region and the global village. It is vanishing the achievements of the past 10 years." US military Afghanistan
The U.S. government has spent $7 billion in the past decade to fight Afghanistan's opium trade. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
Soon after Barack Obama's 2008 election, as his administration weighed a Pentagon request to deploy tens of thousands of additional troops to the worsening conflict, the White House set out to overhaul its approach to counternarcotics. Until then, the United States and its allies in Afghanistan had turned a blind eye to the drug links of several warlords they backed.
Richard Holbrooke, who would become President Obama's top envoy for the region, argued that the United States needed a robust interagency approach to fight the drug trade. It would include aggressive interdiction, strengthening rule-of-law institutions and taking down the heads of the trade — even if that meant pursuing senior government officials.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, which had just more than a dozen agents in Afghanistan, deployed several dozen more to the war zone, embedding small teams in U.S. military bases. DEA officials said they became alarmed by how intertwined the trade and the insurgency had become. Taliban leaders had long taxed poppy farmers, but more insurgents were running drug labs and smuggling networks, investigators found.
"At first, they saw it as a means to achieve their ends, as a funding source," a senior DEA official in Kabul said in an interview. "As so often happens with drugs, it corrupted them. You get money and power and influence and all those things through drug trafficking, not to mention houses and fancy cars."
The booming trade had a peculiar feature that stunned agents who had tackled cartels in Colombia and Southeast Asia. Unlike drug networks in those regions, where rivalry among kingpins often turned violent, Afghan drug traffickers were surprisingly collaborative.
"They seem to operate more as a collective," said the DEA official, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity to provide a candid assessment of the problem. "They'll share land. They'll share labs, chemists. It was surprising to those of us who came from areas where that was a problem."
The DEA and members of Afghanistan's counternarcotics police had considerable success in interdiction operations and brought a steady stream of cases to a drug tribunal funded by the U.S. and British governments. But few top kingpins were prosecuted. Extraditing cartel chiefs to the United States was not an option, because Kabul and Washington do not have an extradition treaty.
The State Department funded manual eradication initiatives that were run by provincial officials. It also established a monetary rewards system for governors of provinces that remained poppy-free or had significant declines in cultivation. The U.S. Agency for International Development, meanwhile, launched programs to increase the appeal of alternative crops.
Critics of the West's counternarcotics policies say that while some of those initiatives were well thought out, ultimately they were too little, too late.
The office of the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction noted in its latest quarterly report that drug interdictions have dropped as the U.S. drawdown has gained steam. The DEA operations, the report added, will be largely constrained to Kabul; without the military, agents will have limited ability to move around the country safely. Drug trafficking is all but guaranteed to flourish unimpeded in Kandahar and Helmand, the southern provinces where the largest share of U.S. troops were killed during the war, the auditing agency warned.
"Poor security, a small Afghan [counternarcotics] security force, minimal assets and lack of intelligence to identify opium production networks are likely to allow drug traffickers to move and operate largely unimpeded in these important provinces," the inspector general warned in the September report.
Hajji Sha Wali, an elder in Helmand province, said poppy farmers were once open to heeding the calls from Kabul and international officials suggesting they plant alternative crops.
"They told us they would give us alternatives, build bridges for us, but they didn't keep their promises," Wali said in a phone interview from his home district, Marja. Most ordinary Afghans dislike the drug trade, he added, but a growing number are turning to it out of necessity or coercion. "But people are very impoverished, and costs are rising every day. Meanwhile, the armed opposition forces are getting people to plant poppy so they can make money from it."
The senior DEA agent said the fight against drugs will probably become more challenging in the years ahead.
"This is going to be the Afghans' fight to carry forward," he said. "We will continue to be here in some numbers to support and assist them and continue to advise, but it definitely has to be turned over to them."
Lemahieu, the U.N. official, said the counternarcotics institutions the West is leaving behind represent a model of the type of effort that could ultimately make a dent. But they lack political support and remain woefully small, he said.
"If you leave 2,700 counternarcotics police to clean up Afghanistan of drug activity, good luck," he said. "It's not going to happen."
© 2013, The Washington Post
http://www.ticotimes.net/More-news/News-Briefs/The-U.S.-spent-7-billion-to-fight-the-drug-war-in-Afghanistan-and-guess-what-The-opium-trade-is-growing_Monday-November-04-2013
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Carl Sagan - "Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." --- Robert Pirsig - "When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion." --- Brian Cox - "[One] problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense."
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dokunai
Cactus, Cannabis, Cubensis

Registered: 01/31/10
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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: Simplepowa]
#19115297 - 11/10/13 02:52 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Attempting to eradicate poppies gets our guys killed, costs tons of cash, and despite 10+ years of military action has resulted in a bumper poppy crop this year. Let's do throw more money into this hole!
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EastBayRay

Registered: 06/06/13
Posts: 746
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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is *DELETED* [Re: dokunai] 1
#19115460 - 11/10/13 03:23 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Post deleted by EastBayRayReason for deletion: Post birth prolapsed anus.
Edited by EastBayRay (11/10/13 03:32 PM)
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travelleler
a horse-fart in a hurricane



Registered: 08/30/08
Posts: 3,955
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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: EastBayRay]
#19115539 - 11/10/13 03:38 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
a street value worth $112,000 of heroin rocks
Heroin rocks? 
wouldnt it be amazing if they would have spent that money fighting Meth at the Mexican border???
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"Whales have deep thoughts"
Dreams are the fuel of the soul
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VersaLife
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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: travelleler] 1
#19116350 - 11/10/13 06:09 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Yea read the book Dark Alliance and you'll get why the opium production skyrocketed after we invaded
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Camwritesgonzo
The Unflushable Stool



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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: Simplepowa]
#19116631 - 11/10/13 07:00 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Gee, wasn't that the case before? Something about the CIA and heroin and body bags. Opium is money, pure and simple. When it's processed into skag, it becomes money and control. The vested interest in foreign drugs is what has kept the powers in constant control, especially on a socioeconomic and racial level. Remember all that coca dust which went from being the glamor drug of celebrities and sports stars of the 70's and 80's to being the scourge of the inner city and the projects in the form of crack? Brought in by the CIA from Nicaragua. Sound a little like the methamphetamine epidemic? The chief difference being that they only imported the precursors, they made it so the common person had to make his/ her own dinner (crank).
-------------------- "I've always maintained that reality is for those who can't face drugs."-Tom Waits "I feel the same way about disco as I feel about herpes."-Hunter S. Thompson A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
 
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downlowfunk
Retired Festival Veteran



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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: travelleler]
#19117020 - 11/10/13 08:08 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
travelleler said:
Quote:
a street value worth $112,000 of heroin rocks
Heroin rocks? 
wouldnt it be amazing if they would have spent that money fighting Meth at the Mexican border???
No4 Afghan Pebbles. Thank you Poppy Bush.
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Konyap

Registered: 06/30/07
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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: downlowfunk]
#19117039 - 11/10/13 08:12 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Those illiterate peasants are sitting on a gold mine
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egodeathflux
Guttersnipe



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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: downlowfunk]
#19118990 - 11/11/13 04:03 AM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
downlowfunk said:
Quote:
travelleler said:
Quote:
a street value worth $112,000 of heroin rocks
Heroin rocks? 
wouldnt it be amazing if they would have spent that money fighting Meth at the Mexican border???
No4 Afghan Pebbles. Thank you Poppy Bush.
I have never seen white (no4) heroin from Afghanistan.. The UK gets almost all of it's heroin from that region and I have never been offered or even heard of anyone getting no4. This includes MANY junkies in their late 40's-60's, it is pretty much all no3 and needs to be cut with citric/vit c to cook up.. I was under the impression most white dope came from S. America, despite it being called China White.
Any UK/European addicts feel free to chime in, it is essentially unheard of here unless procured online through TOR etc.
-------------------- "Atrophic interludes weave through my life far too often, for me to fight the biggest enemies" "Standing on the corner of 5th and Vermouth"
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Morel Guy
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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: egodeathflux]
#19119118 - 11/11/13 05:46 AM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Really doubt anything other than black tar comes from s.america. I'd rather have afghan hash. Never did heroin, but know people who died from it. Opium gives me wicked dreams.
-------------------- "in sterquiliniis invenitur in stercore invenitur" In filth it will be found in dung it will be found
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stzacrack
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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: Morel Guy]
#19119527 - 11/11/13 09:18 AM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
Morel Guy said: Really doubt anything other than black tar comes from s.america. I'd rather have afghan hash. Never did heroin, but know people who died from it. Opium gives me wicked dreams.
actually the best powder heroin (H#4) in the country comes from columbia to the east coast.
H#4 is the purest form of heroin, best for shooting.
never done tar, but stuff is less potent than #4
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egodeathflux
Guttersnipe



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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: stzacrack]
#19119925 - 11/11/13 10:55 AM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
stzacrack said:
Quote:
Morel Guy said: Really doubt anything other than black tar comes from s.america. I'd rather have afghan hash. Never did heroin, but know people who died from it. Opium gives me wicked dreams.
actually the best powder heroin (H#4) in the country comes from columbia to the east coast.
H#4 is the purest form of heroin, best for shooting.
never done tar, but stuff is less potent than #4
Exactly, we have entirely different smuggling routes. S. American dope comes up to the East coast through the Caribbean, hence the difference between East and West. Most West coast stuff in the US comes over the border from Mexico, not in through New Jersey (renowned for having the best dope in the US to my knowledge).
Also S. American white dope turns up in Canada, again due to shipping routes rather than over-land smuggling operations. I only had white dope in Vancouver and was there for several months. I assume the same is true in the east of Canada, presumably they get dope from the Eastern seaboard of the US. Not sure about central Canada, does anyone even live there? I thought it was pretty much empty. I assume they smoke beaver tails etc.
Black tar isn't even known about by most users in the UK, unless they spend their time on forums etc.
-------------------- "Atrophic interludes weave through my life far too often, for me to fight the biggest enemies" "Standing on the corner of 5th and Vermouth"
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downlowfunk
Retired Festival Veteran



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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: egodeathflux]
#19122709 - 11/11/13 07:37 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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The UN War on Drugs, we enslave more people than the world bank can count.
Big ups to HSBC for washing all that money. Remember Suboxone is our number one money maker. Recover all profits.
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Tmethyl
Smear in the shale


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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: downlowfunk]
#19123855 - 11/11/13 10:34 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Congratulations to the Afghani people for kicking Americas stupid ass. I'll be hoping for more great losses
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HybridprX
Biodegrader of coir



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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: Tmethyl]
#19124993 - 11/12/13 05:25 AM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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mod edit: Flaming is not allowed.
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Edited by Alan Rockefeller (11/12/13 11:01 PM)
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stzacrack
Stranger


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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: HybridprX]
#19125134 - 11/12/13 06:16 AM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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you're not even american
afraid your big brother can't beat up the middle east?
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Tmethyl
Smear in the shale


Registered: 07/16/12
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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: HybridprX]
#19125283 - 11/12/13 07:42 AM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
HybridprX said:
Quote:
Tmethyl said: Congratulations to the Afghani people for kicking Americas stupid ass. I'll be hoping for more great losses 
And I'll be hoping for the next terrorist attack to be funded solely by the money procured from Afghanistan's opium sales to either kill or permanently disfigure you or your family.
fucking dumb ass.
heroine users purchases of opium produced in Afghanistan directly pay for those towel heads to continue on raping small children and killing innocent afghanies and coalition forces.
Get ass raped Tmethyl
cute.
Looks like you know what they've been feeding you through the media, but you're utterly oblivious to the facts. America is not the 'good guys' my friend. You've just been made to believe they are.
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qman
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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: HybridprX] 1
#19125346 - 11/12/13 08:14 AM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
HybridprX said:
Quote:
Tmethyl said: Congratulations to the Afghani people for kicking Americas stupid ass. I'll be hoping for more great losses 
And I'll be hoping for the next terrorist attack to be funded solely by the money procured from Afghanistan's opium sales to either kill or permanently disfigure you or your family.
fucking dumb ass.
heroine users purchases of opium produced in Afghanistan directly pay for those towel heads to continue on raping small children and killing innocent afghanies and coalition forces.
Get ass raped Tmethyl
Who you think profits from the opium trade? It's not the "towel heads".
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NotTheDevil
Transhuman


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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: travelleler]
#19126493 - 11/12/13 01:51 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
travelleler said:
Quote:
a street value worth $112,000 of heroin rocks
Heroin rocks? 
wouldnt it be amazing if they would have spent that money fighting Meth at the Mexican border???
cause that worked so well on the opium?
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Dickhead
2 Times

Registered: 01/24/05
Posts: 28,769
Loc: groin
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Re: The U.S. spent $7 billion to fight the drug war in Afghanistan, and guess what: The opium trade is [Re: NotTheDevil]
#19126805 - 11/12/13 02:50 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Just an FYI, much of the $7 billy went to an international labor force/commercial network who will fight for their jobs. This is a catastrophic situation set up to proliferate itself for generations to come.
-------------------- Multiplied
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