Drug production kills trees and people
March 2009
Since the United States and the UN ‘took over’ Afghanistan from the Taliban, the annual opium production has increased over 5400 per cent – 150 tonnes in 2001, 8200 tonnes in 2007. The 2007 harvest produced about 820 tonnes of heroin and at the Uzbekistan border, UN troops found themselves in the strange position of having to wave through the convoys of black jeeps. All this land growing poppies cannot be used for food production or reforestation! The chemical waste products of the heroin labs pollute additional land.
Worse for the trees is the situation in Latin American countries ruled by cocaine. Here, unlike in Afghanistan, US involvement has actually helped to destroy 1.15 million hectares of coca, but in Colombia for one, production has not actually fallen. In March 2009, ‘Latin America declares war on drugs a failure’ (The Guardian Weekly, 13 March 09, pp1-2).
In Latin America, armed groups seeking new land for coca are clearing rainforests killing and evicting the inhabitants. ‘Some 270,000 Colombians were forced to flee their homes in the first half of 2008’ (The Guardian Weekly), the situation in Venezuela is equally bad.
The Colombian government has created a website for ‘Awareness about cocaine’s ecocide in Colombia’. Note: This website disappeared in late 2012 – now that’s worrying!
