Thursday, January 24, 2008

OPIUM UPDATE


I have always been drawn to the romantic concept of the Victorian opium den, which I imagine, of course, filled with colors, wafting fans, ornate pipes, exotic Chinese woman bringing you stuff as you recline among hallucinating pre-Raphaelite beauties and Lord Alfred Douglas.

Yeah, fat chance now it’s all processed into smack for junkies.

But new multiple twist would appear to have made the story even more depressing as the War on Drugs falls over the War on Terror and then they both become hopelessly entangled in Bush’s War in Iraq. This story came from both aeswiren and Roger in Scotland (who hopes the Greenland Pump doesn’t fail – pump don’t fail me now, so to speak.)

Opium Fields Spread Across Iraq as Farmers Try to Make Ends Meet
By Patrick Cockburn
The cultivation of opium poppies whose product is turned into heroin is spreading rapidly across Iraq as farmers find they can no longer make a living through growing traditional crops. Afghan with experience in planting poppies have been helping farmers switch to producing opium in fertile parts of Diyala province, once famous for its oranges and pomegranates, north- east of Baghdad.
At a heavily guarded farm near the town of Buhriz, south of the provincial capital Baquba, poppies are grown between the orange trees in order to hide them, according to a local source.

Click for the rest of the tale.
The secret word is Laudanum

PLUS I rant in LA CityBeat for some few hundred words on last weeks Obama coke hoo-ha and though the website is still an intolerable dog’s dinner one can actually access the story.

2 comments:

A Strange Lad said...

All of it? Damn... that's a bummer... good smoke, that...

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Doc, for sticking up for the incorrigibly unacceptably intoxicated. While we have to tolerate the obnoxiously sober, we drunks and dopers are judged. The best and the brightest drank to excess, mainlined, toked, chainsmoked, etc. Moderation is for the middlin'.