Afghanistan's "Spike in poppy cultivation"...LET FREEDOM REIGN!

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

A field of opium poppies in Essazai Kili, Afghanistan.

Opium Production Up in Afghanistan

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,140822,00.html

WASHINGTON — An alarming uptick in poppy production has Afghan and international officials worried about the impact the opium trade will have on the emerging democracy, but all sides agree that interdiction efforts must be led by the Afghans themselves.

While President Hamid Karzai was inaugurated Tuesday with great fanfare, a U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (search) report released last month shows that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan (search) was up 64 percent from 2003 to 2004. The percent of agricultural land used for poppy cultivation has risen from 1.6 percent to 2.9 percent during that time, or 51,000 hectares to 131,000 hectares. While the price per kilogram has dropped 67 percent during that period, all 32 provinces in the country and a record number of farmers are involved in some form of opium cultivation.

"The situation is getting out of hand," said Mahmood Karzai, brother of the new president. Karzai lives in the United States and travels frequently to his home country as head of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce (search). "The United States wants to take care of the problem. I think it is a good thing to do, but it’s important that in taking care of the problem, part of the solution is resolving the Afghan economy as a whole."

Col. David Lamm, chief of staff for the U.S. military command in Afghanistan, agrees that production is expanding, and added that efforts to shut it down, including busting drug lords, closing laboratories and destroying the poppies — the main ingredient in heroin — must be led by the Afghans.

[fertilizeonarbusto]

1. Hey

they are just being entrepeneurial

[bemildred]

2. It's only a "spike" if it comes back down.

And it's way more than an "uptick".

[whistle]

3. Hang on Rush, the Oxycoton is on its way