Amid Heroin Epidemic in US, Mexico Doesn't Know the Extent of Opium Cultivation at Home Mark A. Browne - CNSNews.com
go to original April 16, 2016

Risky Life of Mexican Poppy Farmers (Financial Times)

As cheap Mexican heroin fuels an increase in addiction in the U.S., the Mexican government does not know how much opium is cultivated within the country’s borders even as production surges, according to investigators and a U.N. official.

Illicit opium production in the mountains of the state of Guerrero “tripled in the last eight years”, according to Carlos Zamudio, an investigator with the citizen’s group CUPIHD, which lobbies to reduce the risks and harm associated with drugs.

Poppies, cultivated for heroin, have traditionally been grown in the states of Durango, Chihuahua and Sinaloa in northern Mexico but cultivation has expanded further south into Oaxaca, Michoacán, and Guerrero, he said.

Mexico’s military discovered almost an acre of opium poppies growing in the township of Ensenada just 60 miles from the U.S. border earlier this month. The Associated Press reported that the crop was destroyed along with smaller marijuana plots found in the area.

Half of the heroin consumed in the U.S. originates in Mexico, an increase of 14 percent over 2009, Bloomberg News reported last year, citing the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

According to the U.N.’s 2014 World Drug Report, an upswing in heroin availability in the U.S. in 2012 was “likely due to high levels of heroin production in Mexico and Mexican traffickers expanding into ‘white heroin’ markets.”

Yet heroin seizures actually declined in Mexico by 58 percent that same year – 2012 – the report said.

Read the rest at CNSNews.com

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!