The Persistent Poppy
by The production of the Poppy plant in Afghanistan has reduced the country to a poverty stricken, opium addicted society.
A very persistent Poppy.
Afghanistan’s war-shattered economy remains hooked on the poppy. The country is the world’s top producer of opium which is the primary ingredient in heroin. A survey done in 2006 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime revealed that the area under cultivation in 2006 roes a whopping 59% over that in 2005. One effect has been a rise in the opiate addiction, which now afflicts 1.4% of Afghans. Opium addiction among Afghan men is a source of major economic problems for their families, community and economy. In a country where opportunities for women is limited, families become poorer when the man of the household become addicts.
In 2005, a government-led eradication effort curtailed poppy plantings, but did little to reduce opium protection, since good weather yielded a large harvest from the remaining plants. With a field of poppies generating approximately nine times the income of a comparable field of wheat, poor farmers have little incentive to plant legal crops. This poppy driven economy has created a country that can neither live without the poppy productively, or with it. In the present day little has been done to give incentive to afghan farmers to stop the production of the poppy plant
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