64,070 vs 17: 10x As Many

64,070 vs 17: 10x As Many by Rory - The Daily Coin

No marches, no politicians calling for change, no mainstream media running a 24 hour news cycle screaming from the rooftops and no children being marched out to "speak out" against the reality...

The opioid epidemic ravaging the United States is taking a grim and growing toll.

The latest numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 64,070 people died from drug overdoses in 2016. That's a 21 percent increase over the year before. Approximately three-fourths of all drug <class="link">overdose deaths are now caused by <class="link">opioids — a class of drugs that includes <class="link">prescription painkillers as well as <class="link">heroin and potent synthetic versions like <class="link">fentanyl. Source

Then we find hysteria with planned marches, politicians calling for change, mainstream media running 24 hour news cycles screaming from the rooftops and children being marched out to "speak out" against the reality...

The teen gunman accused of opening fire with a semi-automatic rifle at his former high school in Parkland, Florida, has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, officials said Thursday.

Authorities said the suspect, identified as 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, concealed himself in the crowd fleeing Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School following the massacre on Wednesday afternoon. He was arrested in nearby Coral Springs. Source

So here is David Hogg - the kid being pushed by the mainstream media as the main student spokesman after the FL school shooting - from his own YouTube talking about lying, convincingly, to strangers about SHOOTING HIS FRIEND.

Totally just coincidence. Nothing to see here. 😒 pic.twitter.com/yQLeqhmfmn

— Ⓥin Ⓐrmani (@vinarmani) February 20, 2018

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Until our nation get serious and realistically look at what is happening to your children and your neighborhood our world will continue swimming in the toilet. Not saying the tragedy in Florida is anything less than what it is, just pointing out the differences. If one simply divides 64,070 by 365 the conclusion would be 175.53 people die everyday from PREVENTABLE overdoses. Said another way, 10 times as many. No outrage, no nothing. 10 times as many - 10 times as many. 10 TIMES AS MANY.

When I began to explore the opium wars, which began in the early 1700’s and came into full view in the early 1800’s, Britain, France and the United States, had taken full aim at China in the name of “free trade”. Things haven’t changed all that much since the West looked East to find a flow of wealth they could not control.

The Chinese had a lock on trade in the early 1700’s by having products that people wanted to purchase, silk, tea and porcelain in particular. The Chinese were not that interested in what the East had to offer. At the time silver was not only money, but it was the currency of the day. People used silver like we use worthless paper dollars/debit cards today. The biggest difference from then to now is that silver has value and the dollar is a promise to generate more debt. I find it interesting that Rothschild began taking over the global banking system towards the end of the opium war and just prior to the Civil War in the United States.

Poppy production exploded in 2015 after the U.S. ramped up the occupation efforts. According to Yahoo news

It's the cash crop of the Taliban and the scourge of Afghanistan — the country's intractable opium cultivation. This year, many Afghan poppy farmers are expecting a windfall as they get ready to harvest opium from a new variety of poppy seeds said to boost yield of the resin that produces heroin.

The plants grow bigger, faster, use less water than seeds they've used before, and give up to double the amount of opium, they say. No one seems to know where the seeds originate from. The farmers of Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where most of Afghanistan's poppies are grown, say they were hand-delivered for planting early this year by the same men who collect the opium after each harvest, and who also provide them with tools, fertilizer, farming advice — and the much needed cash advance.

To the villagers, the shadowy men are intermediaries for drug lords and regional traffickers working with or for the Taliban, underscoring the extensive web that fuels the opium trade and keeps the poppy farmers in a clasp of terror and dependency. The impoverished famers have little recourse but to accept the seeds and other farming materials on credit, to be paid back when they harvest the crop, continuing a never ending cycle of debt. Afghanistan's poppy harvest, which accounts for most of the world's heroin, is worth an estimated $3 billion a year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Production hit a record high in 2014, up 17 percent compared to the year before, as opium and the drugs trade continued to undermine security, rule of law and development, while funding both organized crime and the Taliban — often one and the same. The trend is expected to continue in 2015, in part thanks to the new poppy seeds, according to officials tasked with overseeing the eradication of poppy crops.

This upcoming harvest in late spring is expected to surpass last year's country-wide record of 7,800 metric tons (8,600 U.S. tons) by as much as 7 percent and 22 percent in Kandahar and Helmand provinces respectively, local officials said. Experts say the Taliban, who have been waging war on the Kabul government for more than a decade, derive around 40 percent of their funding from opium, which in turn fuels their insurgency. Source

We have been stating the opioid explosion is a product of the American occupation of Afghanistan that began in 2002, just after President Bush, Jr determined the Afghans were hiding Bin Laden. Well, it turns they weren't and Bin Laden was hiding in plain sight. But that's another story. If one would simply read the UNODC report published in 2014, put on your "parental" glasses and truly review what is said, the picture is very clear.

Fierce fighting in recent months in poppy-growing regions shows the Taliban's determination to protect their trafficking routes and the seasonal workers who come to earn money at harvest time from government forces under orders to eradicate the crop. Gul Mohammad Shukran, chief of Kandahar's anti-narcotics department, said the new seeds came with the drug traffickers, but he did not know exactly where from. They yield "better drug plants, which require less water and have a faster growth time." "This is a big threat to everyone," he said, adding that Afghanistan's central authorities had failed to act on his warnings.

Growing poppy for opium is illegal in Afghanistan and forbidden under Islam, the country's predominant religion. But Afghan farmers feel they have no choice. For more than a decade the government and its international partners have pleaded with them to grow something else — wheat, fruit or even saffron. When that didn't work, the police were sent to destroy crops. And when that failed, the Americans and the British tried handing out free wheat seeds, an enterprise that found little fertile ground.

This spring, the opium fields have again erupted in a sea of bright pink poppy flowers. Source

The fighting would stop if the U.S. military vacated the area, brought the soldiers home and stopped this senselessness that you and I have been paying for for the past 16 years.

The new poppy seeds allow farmers to almost double the output from each plant, said Helmand's provincial police chief Nabi Jan Malakhail. At harvest, collectors cut the bulb of the plant, allowing the raw opium to ooze out. This resin dries and is collected the following day.

Malakhail said the new seeds grow bulbs that are bigger than usual and can be scored twice within a few days, thus doubling the quantity of raw opium. The plants mature in three to four months, rather than the five months of the previous seed variety, allowing farmers to crop three times a year instead of just twice.

In Kandahar’s Zhari district, farmer Abdul Baqi said he knows poppy growing is illegal and that, given a choice, he would “rather eat grass.” But, he added, “I cannot feed my kids with nothing but the air.”

Baqi said the Taliban and associated crime gangs make it easy for the farmers to produce opium, and difficult — even deadly — not to.

Without government support, it’s impossible to grow food crops as the cash-strapped farmers would have to pay for the seeds, tools, fertilizer and irrigation themselves. No one would come and collect their crop, even if their landlords allowed them to grow wheat or other food. Source

Without the nanny state these poor farmers who have been working the land for thousands of years would be completely lost.

If the government took charge and provided irrigation and power, Hismatullah Janan, another Zhari poppy grower, said he would gladly change to growing wheat or similar crops “so we could make an honest and decent living, and leave this so-called dirty work behind.”

Afghan anti-narcotics officials say they need international assistance to proceed with poppy eradication.

Yet since 2002, the United States has spent at least $7 billion “on a wide variety of programs to reduce poppy cultivation, prevent narcotics production, treat drug addiction and improve the criminal justice system to combat drug trafficking,” John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, told the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control in January. Source

Are they sure the U.S. hasn't spent $7 billion in airlifting opium, or heroin, out of Afghanistan to be shipped around the world? Who is in charge of these records? Is this $7 billion part of the missing $21 TRILLION that is currently unaccounted in the DoD and HUD departments of the federal government?

Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world’s opium and opiates originating from there find their way to every corner of the globe, Sopko said.

The Taliban will also likely be emboldened, since for the first time this year, there are no international combat troops on the battlefields of Afghanistan after the NATO drawdown at the end of 2014.

Many anti-narcotics officials also left, fuelling concerns that Afghanistan’s economic addiction to opium, worth around 15 percent of its gross domestic product, would only grow, Sopko added.

Almost 90 percent of Afghanistan’s poppy cultivation is in the south and the west — and provinces such as Helmand and Kandahar, longtime Taliban strongholds, have become synonymous for poppy cultivation.

As opium production rises, so does Afghanistan’s own drug addiction problem. Estimates put the number of heroin addicts in the country at between 1.5 million and 2 million in a population estimated at around 30 million. And the unchecked Afghan opium production is also blamed for rising drug addiction in neighboring countries, including the former Soviet republics to the north, Iran to the west, and China and Pakistan to the east.

The UNODC can do little beyond encouraging the government to curb opium production, said the organization’s chief in Afghanistan, Andrey Avetisyan.

Kabul, with the support from the international community, he said, needs to find a way to introduce “crops that can be a serious competition to opium.”

But for now, finding something more lucrative than the mystery poppy seeds is a daunting task, so the vicious opium cycle continues. Source

How much more are we suppose to accept? How many more family members do we have to lose before the American people get serious about our children dying, everyday?