HEROIN’S BAD WITHDRAWAL –

August 16, 2021 – Afghan farmers weigh myriad factors in deciding how much poppy to plant. These range from annual precipitation and the price of wheat, the main alternative crop to poppy, to world opium and heroin prices.

Yet even during droughts and wheat shortages, when wheat prices rocket, Afghan farmers have grown poppy and extracted opium gum that is refined into morphine and heroin. In recent years, many have installed Chinese-made solar panels to power deep water wells.

Three of the last four years have seen some of Afghanistan’s highest levels of opium production, according to the UNODC. Even as the COVID-19 pandemic raged, poppy cultivation soared 37 percent last year, it reported in May.

Illicit narcotics are “the country’s largest industry except for war,” said Barnett Rubin, a former US Department of State adviser on Afghanistan.

The estimated all-time high for opium production was set in 2017 at 9,900 tonnes worth some $1.4bn in sales by farmers or roughly 7 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP, the UNODC reported.

more@Aljazeera