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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
An Opium Market Mystery
    #6829548 - 04/24/07 09:43 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

An Opium Market Mystery
By Antonio Maria Costa
April 25, 2007 - Washington Post

Something strange is going on in the global opium market, and it could spell trouble.

Opium is a commodity -- an illegal commodity, but it should still be subject to the normal rules of supply and demand.

Annual demand for opium is approximately 4,500 tons. Last year a record 6,100 tons were produced in Afghanistan alone. That country's production is 30 percent more than total world demand. Heroin prices should, in theory, be plummeting. But they are not. So what is going on?

Does opium defy the laws of economics? Historically, no. In 2001, prices surged tenfold from 2000, to a record high, after the Taliban all but eliminated opium poppy cultivation across the Afghan territory under its control. So why, with last year's bumper crop, is the opposite not occurring? Early estimates suggest that opium cultivation is likely to increase again this year. That should be an added incentive to sell.

Yet prices seem to be resilient. The (unweighted) national average price of dry opium at the farm gate in Afghanistan is dropping, but not significantly -- it was $125 per kilo in December 2006 compared with $150 per kilo a year earlier. Prices differ across the country, not surprisingly, since Afghanistan is not a unified territory or market, even for opium. But overall, the drop in prices is modest when compared with the massive increase in opium production, 50 percent, in 2006.

Heroin prices on the streets of Western Europe are also relatively steady, although the drug's purity is going up -- a telltale sign of greater availability.

Are farmers stockpiling the drug? Unlikely. Opium, unlike cocaine, has a long shelf life and can be stored as a form of saving, a source of liquidity and as collateral for credit. But why would poor farmers sit on more than $1 billion worth of stock when they are struggling to make ends meet and common sense suggests that prices could easily fall?

An alternative hypothesis is that new heroin markets may be emerging somewhere we do not yet know about, perhaps in Asia. But if new markets were absorbing a 1,500-ton surplus, we would expect an increase in seizures of the drug and overdoses in these countries. That hasn't been happening.

So where is it? I fear there may be a more sinister explanation for why the bottom has not fallen out of the opium market: Major traffickers are withholding significant amounts.

Drug traffickers have a symbiotic relationship with insurgents and terrorist groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Instability makes opium cultivation possible; opium buys protection and pays for weapons and foot soldiers, and these in turn create an environment in which drug lords, insurgents and terrorists can operate with impunity.

Opium is the glue that holds this murky relationship together. If profits fall, these sinister forces have the most to lose. I suspect that the big traffickers are hoarding surplus opium as a hedge against future price shocks and as a source of funding for future terrorist attacks, in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

What can be done? Since NATO forces are wary of making enemies out of opium farmers by being associated with eradication, and since the Afghan government is opposed to spraying poppy fields, rounding up the major traffickers may be the best available option for disrupting Afghanistan's lucrative opium market.

Another step in the right direction would be to draw up a list of most-wanted traffickers involved in the Afghan drug trade. These criminals would be subject to international arrest warrants, asset freezes, travel bans and, where appropriate, extradition to face justice.

More could also be done to find and destroy opium storage facilities and heroin labs. This is by no means easy, but interdiction at the source is always more effective than trying to catch drug shipments dispersed into smaller units and smuggled across mountain passes and deserts.

Afghanistan's neighbors are either accomplices or victims in the opium trade, so they need to be part of the solution. They could, for example, improve intelligence-sharing and border security to ensure that more opium is seized. At the moment, less than a quarter of the world's opium is intercepted, compared with around half of global cocaine output.

But even if the surplus is tracked down and destroyed, and even if law enforcement efforts improve, interdiction alone will not solve Afghanistan's opium problem. More needs to be done to wean farmers off illicit crops, especially by giving them sustainable alternative sources of income.

Most important, the consuming countries need to get serious about curbing drug addiction. If there was less demand for heroin, the bottom really would fall out of the opium market.

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OfflineCUBErt
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Re: An Opium Market Mystery [Re: veggie]
    #6830362 - 04/25/07 12:42 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

:borat:

Propaganda


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Invisibleindica
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Registered: 08/17/05
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Re: An Opium Market Mystery [Re: CUBErt]
    #6830751 - 04/25/07 05:09 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

thats a lot of opium

i wonder what would happen ifyou shoved 6,100 tonnes of opium up yer butthole?

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OfflineQuake3
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Re: An Opium Market Mystery [Re: veggie]
    #6830963 - 04/25/07 07:34 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

The solutions this guy suggests will not work. How the fuck are you going to round-up the traffickers? I remember decades ago, there was a very wealthy drug lord (opium) in Pakistan. His mansion was surrounded by weapons that his country didn't even have access to, or have not developed. These people in Afghanistan are filthy rich. They have their own armies, a set of corrupt officials at almost every level.

The only solution that will work is to legalize the opium market. We should buy the opium and use it to make prescription opiates. Yes, the drug lords can pay the farmers higher, but if heroin is free and legal (via prescription) in a clinic, then who's going to pay for it? There wouldn't be a market.

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Offlinededjam
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Re: An Opium Market Mystery [Re: Quake3]
    #6830996 - 04/25/07 07:45 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Why dont we legalize opium, quit labeling everyone we dont like a terrorist, and work with those in charge in Afgan to start a legal opium trade? I would think everyone would benefit, and if they didnt have to go through illegal means, there wouldnt be so many "terrorists" involved.

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Offlinenolongerinuse
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Re: An Opium Market Mystery [Re: dedjam]
    #6831345 - 04/25/07 09:50 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I want to know is who is comming up with these numbers? How do you know this, is someone keeping the numbers for the afgani opium farmers?

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InvisibleJackthaTripper
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Re: An Opium Market Mystery [Re: nolongerinuse]
    #6831608 - 04/25/07 10:42 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

They can determine the approximate opium crop from a given year by analyzing areal photographs. By looking at the number of acres used in the cultivation of poppies they can calculate a base output of the opium crop.

The solution to eradicating the inflated profits of the opium used to fund terrorists: Pay the farmers a generous price for the opium and use it to supplement the pharmaceutical heroin shortage. Then do the same thing every year and keep using the opium crop for medicinal purposes.


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Offlinepokermush
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Re: An Opium Market Mystery [Re: JackthaTripper]
    #6832769 - 04/25/07 02:34 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

The real solution: Let everybody grow their own opium but not sell it. It would put the bad guys out of business, at least as far as opium goes, real quick.

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Offlinekindadank
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Re: An Opium Market Mystery [Re: JackthaTripper]
    #6832773 - 04/25/07 02:34 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

These are all far too logical solutions to the problem and because of this, will never even be seriously considered by anyone with the power to do so.

They're just planning on making everyone quit heroin. Oh and round up all the people selling it. Sounds airtight to me.

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Offline2FiNiTe
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Re: An Opium Market Mystery [Re: Quake3]
    #6833002 - 04/25/07 03:19 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Quake3 said:
We should buy the opium and use it to make prescription opiates.




What makes you think we aren't already and this isn't exactly where its going? What could be better for drug company's profits? Cheaper opium and more expensive pills? These people run the world, If I had to guess I would say you hit the nail on the head and didn't even know it. Not to mention election time is coming, what would be better for a candidate than saying your going to lower health care, and actually do it?


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"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living."

General Omar N. Bradley

Edited by 2FiNiTe (04/25/07 03:19 PM)

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Offlineoppression
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Re: An Opium Market Mystery [Re: 2FiNiTe]
    #6834146 - 04/25/07 08:03 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Sounds like 1982 all over again, after all wars do cost money.


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‘Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.’"

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