Opium Cultivation Reaches Record continued

NARCO-ECONOMY, NARCO-SOCIETY
Three-quarters of production is exported as heroin, meaning Afghanistan must import some 10,000 tons of chemicals to refine the raw opium every year, underlining the scale of the corruption involved in the trade, Costa said.
He said Iranian intelligence had recently shown him pictures of a drug convoy of 62 vehicles with military protection. As well as being a narco-economy, Afghanistan was largely a narco-society, he said, with so many people benefiting from the business: farmers pay a "tax" of around 10 percent of their earnings to local warlords; laboratories pay 12 to 15 percent; and export convoys pay 15 to 18 percent.
But he said the government of President Hamid Karzai's commitment to eradicate the business meant it was not yet possible to say Afghanistan was a narco-state.

The major export route is through Iran and Turkey, with a hub in Istanbul and another in the Albanian capital, Tirana, before the heroin reaches the Netherlands, Europe's main distribution center.
Other routes are through Pakistan; across the ex-Soviet central Asian state of Tajikistan then Kyrgyzstan and Russia to Europe; and through Turkmenistan.
Afghanistan now accounts for 87 percent of global heroin production, which has a worldwide market value of $30 billion. |||

Florida, US
Help, police, someone stole my pot!

A Panhandle couple is under arrest after notifying police Thursday that their quarter-pound stash of marijuana was stolen and that they needed the weed back, because they were going to later sell it. "They're America's dumbest criminals," said Lt. Ricky Ramie, head of the Bay County Sheriff's Office narcotics task force.

Deputies arrested 18-year-old John Douglas Sheetz and 17-year-old Misty Ann Holmes and charged the duo with possession of marijuana with intent to deliver and possession of drug paraphernalia.
According to the police report, the couple returned to the home they share and found the home broken into and a quarter-pound of marijuana missing. They immediately called authorities to report the break-in and theft.

Police said the couple told them they were going to resell the marijuana and allowed the detectives to search the apartment. Investigators discovered several marijuana stems among other drug paraphernalia during the search. They were taken to the Bay County Jail and are each being held on $17,500 bond.|||