Drug Trade Funding Terrorists

The 2007 Afghan opium poppy crop has set another record, the US ambassador conceded this week. All the more reason to embark on forced eradication, he said.

The US government reported Monday that coca cultivation had increased in Colombia again last year -- despite a massive aerial herbicide spraying campaign and $700 million in US aid. The announcement comes as congressional Democrats attempt to cut anti-drug aid to Colombia.

Opium poppies flourished along the Euphrates River when the Sumerians ruled. Now, amidst civil war and chaos, they are returning to Iraq.

The opium economy is the leading employer in Afghanistan, despite limited eradication efforts funded by the west.

A group of 40 British Members of Parliament is calling on the Blair government to support a trial program that would divert Afghan opium from the black market to the licit medicinal market.

The UN is warning that increases are happening in areas characterized by insurgency.

Peru is currently the world's second largest producer of coca and cocaine, and the coca growers' movement there is gaining steam, but it still faces many hurdles, some internal, some external.

A stolidly mainstream Canadian defense and foreign affairs think tank has called for the creation of a marketing board to buy and sell Afghan opium. It's part of a report on Canada in Afghanistan that calls for innovative thinking to avoid failure in NATO's mission there.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is attempting to appease his Western backers by eradicating the country's opium crop, but violence is flaring as a result.

Britain's Conservative Party has joined the call to license Afghan opium. The move comes just days after the British Medical Association called for it to be converted into diamorphine (heroin) for use by the National Health Service.