Word: opium
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Correspondent Charles Eisendrath journeyed to the opium-rich Afyon province of Turkey to talk with poppy farmers (see cut). Eisendrath also interviewed "Mehmet," a former Turkish smuggler who had turned informer for the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. "The sweat bubbled in the creases of his forehead whenever Mehmet told specific details about his job," Eisendrath recalls. Shortly afterward Mehmet disappeared mysteriously from the BNDD network-presumably a casualty. Says Eisendrath: "In a way the sickness-and attempted cure-of the U.S. drug problem had confused Mehmet, and quite possibly destroyed...
...with 38 Ibs. of heroin in their luggage. The two busts tend to confirm the gloomy forecasts of U.S. narcotics experts that as some of the old drug trade routes from Europe become more dangerous, new ones will open up from Asia. The emergence of Asia, with its immense opium production, as a major exporter of narcotics, promises to make the drug trade a truly global problem...
...another. But the effort has been frustrating. Many governments are not particularly receptive to U.S. pleas for cooperation and, as the Cabinet Committee report wryly observes, they are "regularly and skillfully exploited by the illicit international trafficker." The report unhappily notes that in Burma, where the annual opium harvest comes to a hefty 400 tons, the narcotics trade is "not viewed with great alarm." Authorities in Pakistan prefer to act as if their country's opium output, which runs as high as 170 tons a year, is really "quite small...
...success, Turkey, may turn out to be discouragingly hollow. In return for $35 million in various subsidies, Turkey agreed to curb the cultivation of opium after the 1972 crop was harvested. The Administration felt that it had achieved a "breakthrough" because the 80 tons of illicit opium produced by Turkish farmers last year produced 80% of the heroin entering the U.S. market. But now there are worries that the curb may be ineffective, in view of the large supplies of opium that canny Turkish smugglers are rumored to have begun to stockpile long...
Moreover, there is a growing realization that drug traffickers can draw on ample surpluses in the total worldwide illicit production of opium-1,200 tons last year, enough to supply the U.S. market many times over. India, Pakistan and Afghanistan grow some 360 tons of illegal opium each year, most of which at present goes to Iran. The "Golden Triangle" of Burma, Thailand and Laos is the largest single opium-producing area (700 tons a year). Dealers there have been supplying U.S. troops in South Viet Nam, and it is open to question, the report notes, whether they will accept...