(Richard Pohle/The Times)
Troops have been reluctant to act against struggling poppy farmers (but you know they're going to be the big causalities - Johnny)
Over the last few months I have tracked major seizures of cocaine both in the Pacific and the Gulf. Three separate seizures involved semi-submersibles of small submarines that don't go under the water but sink flush with it to eliminate radar signatures. (Doesn't work well for satellite surveillance.) Each of those seizures was 3,000 metric tons or more. Then I found that the DEA had recorded earlier seizures this year totaling more than 4,000 tons. The last time I checked (2000), the U.S. was consuming only 6,000 metric tons of cocaine a year. What gives? There is no evidence I know of to suggest that consumption has grown. It's counter intuitive. I don't have the contacts I used to but I can tell you that in L.A. there is virtually no powdered cocaine to be found and it's been that way for months. There is a little crack out there but I suspect that may be crystal meth -- "crank". Meantime Mexico has erupted into a virtual drug-defined civil war with hundreds, if not thousands, murdered.
Then today Matt Savinar sends me this story about how the world's heroin supply is disappearing:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/10/map_of_the_week_the_mystery_of.html.
Someone is stockpiling heroin. Heroin is the base drug of morphine. The opium poppy, papaver somniferum, is the source of opium, the most commonly used, and most effective natural pain killer in man's history (insert big pharma here - Johnny). Heroin is made from opium. I fear that opium and heroin have become new hot commodities and there is no way that that much opium/heroin could be intended for "recreational" use -- or even to supply addicts. It seems that someone is banking heavily on a lot of people being in a lot of physical pain. -- Good job Matt, as usual. I can't explain what's happening wth cocaine. Is it being hoarded until the price goes up? Not likely, because no one will have money to buy it in just a few short months. But then again, if it's dirt cheap,say $75 a gram...
I repeat that by itself, all the cash from the global drug trade is not relevant to the current economic crisis. I last estimated all cash generated by illegal drugs at aruound $600 billion a year. By itself, the Lehman bankruptcy was $750 billion or so. Then came the bailouts and the trillions in equity that has been destroyed.
I don't have time to do the research but I'm sure we'll find out what it means soon enough I suspect. This all smells so... , so... BUSH.
Maybe we'll see all the drugs turn up right after the markets bottom. That could squeeze a few final dollars out of the corpse.
***
NATO Troops Given New Mandate To Attack Heroin Drug Barons In Afghanistan
British troops will hunt down heroin drug barons and their opium-processing laboratories in Afghanistan for the first time in a new strategy designed to sever the flow of drugs money to the Taleban.
The new strategy represents a change in operations for the 50,000 international troops serving in Afghanistan, which produces 90 per cent of the world’s heroin.
***
NATO Clinches Deal for Tougher Afghan Drug Action
NATO defense ministers reached a deal over controversial plans to launch direct attacks on the thriving drugs trade in Afghanistan, which the US says helps fund the Taliban insurgency raging in the country.
Ministers overcame resistance to the plans from several NATO states -- notably Germany, Italy and Spain -- by accepting that any attacks against opium laboratories would be coordinated with the Afghan authorities.
"There is a formal agreement between the NATO nations to fight drug trafficking," a diplomat confirmed as defense ministers met in the Hungarian capital Budapest for a two-day meeting to discuss issues ranging from the war in Afghanistan to Georgia's NATO membership bid and piracy off the Somali coast.
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