Mexico opium farmers expand to feed U.S. heroin boom
Mexico opium farmers expand to feed U.S. heroin boom
AP
Feb 3, 2015
SIERRA MADRE DEL SUR, MEXICO Red and purple blossoms with fat, opium-filled bulbs blanket the remote creek sides and gorges of the Filo Mayor mountains in the southern state of Guerrero.
The multibillion-dollar Mexican opium trade starts here, with poppy farmers so poor they live in wood-plank, tin-roofed shacks with no indoor plumbing.
Mexican farmers from three villages interviewed by The Associated Press are feeding a growing addiction in the U.S., where heroin use has spread from back alleys to the cul-de-sacs of suburbia.
The heroin trade is a losing prospect for everyone except the Mexican cartels, who have found a new way to make money in the face of falling cocaine consumption and marijuana legalization in the United States. Once smaller-scale producers of low-grade black tar, Mexican drug traffickers are now refining opium paste into high-grade white heroin and flooding the worlds largest market for illegal drugs, using the distribution routes they built for marijuana and cocaine.
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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/02/03/world/social-issues-world/mexico-opium-farmers-expand-to-feed-u-s-heroin-boom/#.VNB8d2c5DDc