Terrific. Now drug production thrives - in Iraq

http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/2933/Opium_Poppies_Bloom_in_Iraqs_Lawless_South

Opium Poppies Bloom in Iraq's Lawless South
Diwaniya Farmers Experiment with Narcotic Flower
Posted 7 hr. 36 min. ago
Opium poppies bloom in northeast Afghanistan's Badakhshan district in May 2005.
Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty.


In at least one corner of Iraq’s vast lawless territories, farmers are trying their hand at a deadly new cash crop: Opium poppies.

The Independent’s Patrick Cockburn reports that some cultivators in southern Iraq are growing the plants, setting off the fear that the breakdown of law and order and the economy in Iraq may have created an environment in which drug production thrives.

The Independent (UK) has learned from “Iraqi sources familiar with the area” that the poppies bloom in former rice fields west and south of the Iraqi city of Diwaniya along the Euphrates River.

Opium poppies are used to produce the narcotics opium and heroin, as well as morphine and other opiate-derivates used in medicine.

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Recently Public Radio featured an interview with an Iraqi vet who was going into the drug and alcohol problems our troops are dealing with in Iraq and how bad it has gotten as the war has gotten worse. As was the case in Vietnam, drugs are plentiful and in some cases encouraged. Speeders are common with many who are pulling extra shifts and duty, weed and all types of depressents have conme into vogue by troops whose lives are now hours of endless boredom surrounded by a few minutes of absolute terror. Alcoholism is on the rise as well...especially from returning vets who try to mask all of what they've seen and experienced in the bottom of a bottle.

Last week, there also was a report that the "insurgents" are making a profit from Iraq and sending that money to other parts of the world. While I suspect a good chunk came from the billions we spread around the country to try to win friends, but drugs...both sales of poppies and other ingredients to Europe and to the growing market of our own troops is filling up the coffers as well.