In this Jan. 26, 2015 photo, a farmer stands in his poppy field in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains of Guerrero state, Mexico. The heroin trade is a losing prospect for everyone except the Mexican cartels, who have found a new way to make money in the face of falling cocaine consumption and marijuana legalization in the United States.
(AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
[From article]
The heroin trade is a losing prospect for everyone except the Mexican cartels, who have found a new way to make money in the face of falling cocaine consumption and marijuana legalization in the United States. Once smaller-scale producers of low-grade black tar, Mexican drug traffickers are now refining opium paste into high-grade white heroin and flooding the world's largest market for illegal drugs, using the distribution routes they built for marijuana and cocaine.
It is a business that even the farmers don't like. In a rare interview with reporters, the villagers told The Associated Press that it's too difficult to ship farm products on roads so rough and close to the sky that cars are in constant danger of tumbling off the single-lane dirt roads that zig-zag up to the fields. They say the small plastic-wrapped bricks of gummy opium paste are the only thing that will guarantee them a cash income.
[. . .]
According to the DEA's 2014 National Drug Threat Assessment, Mexico produces nearly half of the heroin found in the United States, up from 39 percent in 2008. While Afganistan is by far the world's largest producer, it largely sends to markets in Europe and Asia.
[. . .]
Since 2012, Guerrero has been Mexico's most violent state. But only recently has it gotten world attention, when 43 college students disappeared last September and are assumed murdered by the Guerreros Unidos, who had close ties to the mayor in the town of Iguala and reportedly viewed the students as a rival gang.
[. . .]
But a buyer affiliated with the local gang lives in almost every village, acting also as a lookout. Most can be identified by the short-wave radios they carry in a region far from telephone lines or cellular towers.
http://news.yahoo.com/mexican-opium-farmers-expand-plots-supply-us-heroin-145711238.html
Mexican opium farmers expand plots to supply US heroin boom
By MARK STEVENSON
February 2, 2015
[From article]
The heroin trade is a losing prospect for everyone except the Mexican cartels, who have found a new way to make money in the face of falling cocaine consumption and marijuana legalization in the United States. Once smaller-scale producers of low-grade black tar, Mexican drug traffickers are now refining opium paste into high-grade white heroin and flooding the world's largest market for illegal drugs, using the distribution routes they built for marijuana and cocaine.
It is a business that even the farmers don't like. In a rare interview with reporters, the villagers told The Associated Press that it's too difficult to ship farm products on roads so rough and close to the sky that cars are in constant danger of tumbling off the single-lane dirt roads that zig-zag up to the fields. They say the small plastic-wrapped bricks of gummy opium paste are the only thing that will guarantee them a cash income.
[. . .]
According to the DEA's 2014 National Drug Threat Assessment, Mexico produces nearly half of the heroin found in the United States, up from 39 percent in 2008. While Afganistan is by far the world's largest producer, it largely sends to markets in Europe and Asia.
[. . .]
Since 2012, Guerrero has been Mexico's most violent state. But only recently has it gotten world attention, when 43 college students disappeared last September and are assumed murdered by the Guerreros Unidos, who had close ties to the mayor in the town of Iguala and reportedly viewed the students as a rival gang.
[. . .]
But a buyer affiliated with the local gang lives in almost every village, acting also as a lookout. Most can be identified by the short-wave radios they carry in a region far from telephone lines or cellular towers.
http://news.yahoo.com/mexican-opium-farmers-expand-plots-supply-us-heroin-145711238.html
Mexican opium farmers expand plots to supply US heroin boom
By MARK STEVENSON
February 2, 2015
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