By Melanie Hunter
An official (click here) with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee Thursday that the number of deaths involving heroin increased 340 percent from 2007 to 2014, the latest year of available data....
...“The threat posed by heroin has continued to grow dramatically over the past several years, and since 2007, deaths involving heroin have risen 340 percent--from 2,402 in 2007 to 10,574 in 2014. Heroin use is spreading to suburban and rural communities and is growing among most socio-economic classes, age groups and races,” he told the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, and Global Women's Issues....
...“Poppy cultivation in Mexico has increased substantially in recent years, rising from 17,000 hectares in 2014 to 28,000 hectares in 2015, which could yield potential production of 70 metric tons of pure heroin,” he said....
...“Illicit fentanyl is sometimes mixed with powder heroin to increase its effects or mixed with dilutants and sold as synthetic heroin. Increasingly fentanyl is being pressed into pill form and sold as counterfeit prescription opioid pills,” Chester said. “The majority of the elicit fentanyl in the U.S. is clandestinely produced in Mexico or in China. Fentanyl is extremely dangerous and deadly.”
According to Chester, “In 2014, there were more than 5,544 drug overdose deaths involving synthetic narcotics other than methadone – a category that includes fentanyl. This number has more than doubled from two years earlier.”...
Heroine is the product of opium. China's opium culture has been long standing. When adding the illegal trafficking of opium and fentanyl through China to the USA, China's GDP takes an interesting uptick.
Afghanistan's opium ECONOMY is coming directly into the USA and killing Americans. Afghanistan goes unchallenged as the largest producer globally of opium/heroine/fentanyl.
17 September 2015
...The opium (click here) is refined into heroin inside the country and then exported to its neighbours. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (Undoc) estimates the market value of last year's total production to be around $340m (£220m).
As a result Myanmar can now lay claim to the dubious honour, after Afghanistan, of being the second largest producer of opium in the world. It now accounts for almost 25% of the world's total production.
Right up until the end of the 20th century, the mountains of Myanmar, which was part of the so-called "Golden Triangle" with neighbouring Laos and Thailand, was the largest supplier of opium. The region was then overtaken by Afghanistan.
Demand from China, but also Australia and Japan, is one factor behind the rise in production in Myanmar over the last decade.
The single biggest driver in this turnaround is the growth of demand in China where Undoc estimates that 70% of the heroin produced in Asia is consumed by more than a million users....
As a result Myanmar can now lay claim to the dubious honour, after Afghanistan, of being the second largest producer of opium in the world. It now accounts for almost 25% of the world's total production.
Right up until the end of the 20th century, the mountains of Myanmar, which was part of the so-called "Golden Triangle" with neighbouring Laos and Thailand, was the largest supplier of opium. The region was then overtaken by Afghanistan.
Demand from China, but also Australia and Japan, is one factor behind the rise in production in Myanmar over the last decade.
The single biggest driver in this turnaround is the growth of demand in China where Undoc estimates that 70% of the heroin produced in Asia is consumed by more than a million users....
