America's heroin trail: The outdoor factory that feeds the US

America's heroin trail: The outdoor factory that feeds the US

24 minutes ago


One of the recurrent themes of Donald Trump's election campaign was Mexico, and the promises to keep out illegal immigrants and stem the flow of drugs into the US.


The potential amount of pure heroin produced in Mexico last year rose 67% on 2014, and 170% in total over two years, according to the White House. Nearly all Mexican heroin is targeted at the United States - where in the past seven years, overdose deaths caused by the drug grew by 440%. There were more than 10,500 in the last measured year of 2014.

The BBC's special correspondent Ian Pannell reports from Mexico on the surge there in the production of heroin

Smack in the suburbs

The US is in the throes of a heroin and opioid epidemic - drug overdose has become the leading cause of accidental death, overtaking traffic accidents.

It is a health crisis with tentacles reaching across the social spectrum. Lorain County, in the state of Ohio, is mostly suburban and middle-class, with a large rural hinterland.

Its population is only 305,000 but for the last three years, the number of fatal opiate overdoses has hovered at around 65. This year it only took six months to reach that figure.

Avon Lake is the county's wealthiest community - an upmarket suburb of the city of Cleveland. Here, on the shores of Lake Erie, the scourge of opiates - prescription pills and street heroin - is tearing at the fabric of a tightly-knit neighbourhood

more http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37224075

eddie wrote:One of the recurrent themes of Donald Trump's election campaign was Mexico, and the promises to keep out illegal immigrants and stem the flow of drugs into the US.

The potential amount of pure heroin produced in Mexico last year rose 67% on 2014, and 170% in total over two years, according to the White House. Nearly all Mexican heroin is targeted at the United States - where in the past seven years, overdose deaths caused by the drug grew by 440%. There were more than 10,500 in the last measured year of 2014.

67% of 10 ozs. is 6.7 ozs.  That's not very much heroin, on the industrial level.  Unless the number is greater, I'm not impressed.  Your article doesn't say, but my guess is that Mexico is not the giant grower of opium you suggest.

The big sources of heroin are well known:



The big opium producers are Afghanistan and Burma, and the individual's permitted to grow it are the ones on our side.  Mexico, pffft...  Loyalty is bought in Afghanistan by opium growing allowances...  

As Walt Kelly once wrote; We have met the enemy, and they is us!!!

Good catch, Quill. The OP article presents some information quite artfully but the whole "Trump really is trying to protect America" narrative doesn't work unless Mexico is a top supplier.

         MEXICAN gangs are large traffickers (i.e. middle men..) for illicit drugs into North America...

They are famous for contracting their services to Columbian and Peruvian drug lords to move Cocaine into the USA..
Hence those escalating gang wars in Mexico since the late 1990s, and various criminal gangs fight over that drug trade.          

However, when it comes to actually producing drugs,  we don't often seem to see Mexico mentioned in the big league of drug growers for either Opium or Cocaine..

Just shows what a clueless bunch those BBC reporters are, that they don't actually realise the difference between growers and traffickers ???   Maybe too much 'Acapulco Gold' in their diet..        


N.B.   As an Aside :  Australia is in the Top Four countries for the legal production of opium and morphine for the pharma'/medical markets -- thanks to one farm down in Tasmania;  and to the frequent chagrin of it's other big legal competitors in Afghanistan, India and Turkey.

Original Quill wrote:

eddie wrote:One of the recurrent themes of Donald Trump's election campaign was Mexico, and the promises to keep out illegal immigrants and stem the flow of drugs into the US.

The potential amount of pure heroin produced in Mexico last year rose 67% on 2014, and 170% in total over two years, according to the White House. Nearly all Mexican heroin is targeted at the United States - where in the past seven years, overdose deaths caused by the drug grew by 440%. There were more than 10,500 in the last measured year of 2014.

67% of 10 ozs. is 6.7 ozs.  That's not very much heroin, on the industrial level.  Unless the number is greater, I'm not impressed.  Your article doesn't say, but my guess is that Mexico is not the giant grower of opium you suggest.

The big sources of heroin are well known:



The big opium producers are Afghanistan and Burma, and the individual's permitted to grow it are the ones on our side.  Mexico, pffft...  Loyalty is bought in Afghanistan by opium growing allowances...  

As Walt Kelly once wrote; We have met the enemy, and they is us!!!

Mexico is the world's 3rd largest producer by your chart and makes around 25,000 kg a year...

Tommy Monk wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

67% of 10 ozs. is 6.7 ozs.  That's not very much heroin, on the industrial level.  Unless the number is greater, I'm not impressed.  Your article doesn't say, but my guess is that Mexico is not the giant grower of opium you suggest.

The big sources of heroin are well known:



The big opium producers are Afghanistan and Burma, and the individual's permitted to grow it are the ones on our side.  Mexico, pffft...  Loyalty is bought in Afghanistan by opium growing allowances...  

As Walt Kelly once wrote; We have met the enemy, and they is us!!!

Mexico is the world's 3rd largest producer by your chart and makes around 25,000 kg a year...

Yes, but look at the whole numbers. As I pointed out, percentages mean nothing until you plug in the values. Likewise, rankings mean nothing until you plug in the whole numbers.

Afghanistan has a near a monopoly on opioids. For an informative read on how the US controls the world poppy production, take a look at James Risen's, State of War....lol, they even let that Taliban have a few fields.

Actually, the only surprise on that chart is that Burma has been able to make such a dent in the overall production. I would not have thought that it had the climate for growing poppies.