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"The Stimulus of Prohibition: A Critical History of the Global Narcotics Trade" in 'Dangerous Harvest: Drug Plants and the Transformation of Indigenous Landscapes' (2004), pp. 24-111
... The drug money was dominating the politics of the country. In 1989, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto lost power in a noconfidence moment and she charged that drug dealers had spent rupees 194 million to buy the vote of the members of the parliament [42]. By the mid-1980s, the export of heroin reached to $8 billion and created a black market in the Pakistan. ...
... The drug money was dominating the politics of the country. In 1989, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto lost power in a noconfidence moment and she charged that drug dealers had spent rupees 194 million to buy the vote of the members of the parliament[42]. By the mid-1980s, the export of heroin reached to $8 billion and created a black market in the Pakistan. The number of heroin addicts in the country had risen from 1.2 to 1.7 million. ...
Opium poppy is contemplating a cash crop across the globe, which is cultivated in almost every region of the world and also in many areas of Pakistan, especially in Baluchistan, Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) and Khyber Pukhtunkwa (KP). In the heydays of Soviet-Afghan war the cultivation of opium as a cash crop was initiated in Pakistani areas adjacent to that of Afghanistan. In the 1980s the opium poppy was grew in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Federally administrated tribal areas (FATA), Kohistan, and Kala Dhaka and even in Punjab and in Baluchistan. The covert operation in Afghanistan against Soviet led by the CIA has converted the Borderland of Pakistan and Afghanistan into the world top illicit drug producer. The region supplied 60 percent of United States heroin demand. A shadow economy of opium was developed in the country and Pakistan became a major opium producer. The U.S drug enforcement agency (DEA) identified 40 major illicit drug dealer syndicates. The capabilities of the local population are deprived by the opium ban in opium growing areas of Pakistan to meet their traditional socioeconomic needs.
... Iran has invested a billion dollars in border security to interrupt opium smuggling [76]. After establishing the Drug Control Headquarters in 1988, Iranian authorities intercepted increasing amounts of smuggled opium: from 21 metric tons of opium in 1990 [77] to 580 metric tons in 2009 [78] (Fig. 6). While the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan have been concurrently seizing smuggled opium as well, the efforts by Iranian law enforcement authorities have been far more aggressive (Fig. 6). ...
The Golden Crescent region of South Asia—comprising Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan—is a principal global site for opium production and distribution. Over the past few decades, war, terrorism, and a shifting political landscape have facilitated an active heroin trade throughout the region. Protracted conflict has exacerbated already dire socio-economic conditions and political strife within the region and contributed to a consequent rise in opiate trafficking and addiction among the region’s inhabitants. The worsening epidemic of injection drug use has paralleled the rising incidence of HIV and other blood-borne infections in the region and drawn attention to the broader implications of the growing opiate trade in the Golden Crescent. The first step in addressing drug use is to recognize that it is not a character flaw but a form of mental illness, hence warranting humane treatment of drug users. It is also recommended that the governments of the Golden Crescent countries encourage substitution of opium with licit crops and raise awareness among the general public about the perils of opium use.
... In a context of high world and regional demand, combined with a narrow law enforcement focus and limited recognition of its development, security and political implications (Byrd, 2010: 302) there is no reason to believe that 'the war on drugs' will be successful in Afghanistan or elsewhere. As McCoy (2004) notes, prohibition provides a stimulus to production and the current counter narcotics regime exacerbates rather than addresses state breakdown and corruption in drugs affected contexts. A number of key findings are derived from our empirical work and analysis: ...
In the last few years there have been several ‘drug panics’ over new synthetic drugs such as mephedrone and the substituted cathinones. These new designer stimulants have become increasingly popular as substitutes for 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine and other ‘classic’ stimulants. This paper discusses these compounds in the context of the substitutional effects caused by drug prohibition. As drugs are banned, new drugs crop up to replace them. This results in the diversification and proliferation of new drug markets, drugs, drug distributors, and drug consumers. Processes of illegalization are shown to have directly resulted in an explosion of new synthetic stimulant drugs, and irrevocably altered the conventional geographies of drug production, distribution, and consumption. The continuing prohibition of these new substances along with the ones they originally substituted for has had the effect of creating ever-evolving stimulant drug markets, which foster more dangerous conditions for users than the original drug markets themselves.
This article is concerned with the campaign to eradicate opium consumption and cultivation among highland minorities of northern Laos. The campaign has attracted political explanations that emphasise external pressure and enticements from the United States and the United Nations as part of the global War on Drugs. I argue that such explanations ignore the symbolic aspects of the domestic process of Laoisation in post-socialist Laos that has marginalised ethnic minorities and has transformed opium into a key symbol of primitiveness and backwardness and into a fetishised cause of poverty.
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