Afghanistan: Dope, Inc.'s Heroin Machine
January 26, 2009 (LPAC)--The London-centered international narcotics enterprise which Lyndon LaRouche refers to as "Dope, Inc." has converted Afghanistan into a giant opium and heroin producing machine for the global drug market London has created. Afghan opium production soared by 140% over the last five years--from 3,400 metric tons in 2002 to some 8,200 metric tons in 2007--and its share of world production leapt from 75% to 92% in the same period.
This is not a question of local production as such, Lyndon LaRouche stressed today. "The problem lies in the distribution of it internationally. It's because of the shipment of the crop to its market." If you are serious about addressing the problem, LaRouche stated, "you have to destroy the system of drug pushing. The question is how do you make the whole system inoperable. And that depends on the export of the drug, and on obliterating the financial side" of Dope, Inc.'s operations.
Dope, Inc. has a lot going for it in Afghanistan. Opium yields there are about 40 kilograms per hectare, which is substantially higher than in other producing countries, where it is about 15 kg/ha. It is widely known that half of Afghan opium is grown in the British-occupied Helmand province, which is only 9% of the country's land area.
Furthermore, since about 2002 Afghanistan has improved the efficiency of its conversion of opium into heroin, by about 15%. Instead of requiring 10 kg of opium to produce 1 kg of heroin (which has been the standard historic average around the world for decades), Afghanistan now requires only 8.5 kg of opium to produce 1 kg of heroin.
This means that out of an estimated world production of about 795 tons of heroin in 2007, Afghanistan produced some 753 tons (95% of the total), and the rest of the world only 42 tons. The "Afghan bonus" due to the increased conversion efficiency since 2002, added about 110 tons to what they otherwise would have produced--which alone is nearly 3 times what the rest of the world produced!
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