Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Heroin Overdose Exposes US-Invasion Afghanistan Drug Business

The weeping and wailing about an Oscar winner dying of drug abuse (and how common is that?  As common as snow in winter!) has brought the conversation over to the topic of ‘why is the US full of heroin addicts?’  Philip Seymour Hoffman’s heroin overdose exposes 100 per cent RISE in ‘epidemic’ across US over five years

• Heroin use up 100 percent in United States since 2007
• More than 660,000 Americans used heroin in 2012
• Resurgence attributed to crackdown on illegal ‘pill mills’ producing prescription drugs like OxyContin, which gives same high as heroin
• Pill addicts have turned to heroin because its cheaper and available
• Popular in rural and suburban areas, not just inner city
• Users buying single hits for as little as $8
• Drug cartels pushing ever-larger amounts across the Southwestern border

No mention where this mysterious heroin comes from! From May, 2001: Taliban’s Ban On Poppy A Success, U.S. Aides Say right before 9/11 and the odious US alliance with Afghan drug lords, angry with the Taliban destroying their business.

Fast forward to 2009: Poppies a Target in Fight Against Taliban as the opium trade is over 60% of Afghanistan’s GDP.  Note how the Taliban are blamed for this despite the fact that the rulers we installed there are the actual ones doing this.

2012, the Taliban takes over more and more of Afghanistan as the US departs with tail between our legs: Taliban destroy poppy fields in surprise clampdown on Afghan opium trade.  The British newspaper notes that this is a surprise.  Which is silly.  They did this in the past so of course, they would stop the opium trade in the future.  The ones running the opium trade are the US allies and puppets.

This was so easy to predict.  I noted way back in November, 2001, at Atlantic Monthly that the US alliance with drug lords was insane and would have serious blowback in the US.  Sending in our troops meant we would repeat the Golden Triangle of the Vietnam War which also coincided with a surge in addiction here as soldiers brought back addictions to the US.  This is why Nixon expanded the war and declared a ‘War on Drugs’ at home which meant the US citizens were treated like Vietcong in an increasingly violent insurrection.

Forbes Magazine noted in 2009 that the poppy drugs from Afghanistan grew from 640 tons to 8,500 tons under Karzai who is a drug lord himself in the first place.  For the last two years the US media and government officials have lied about all this and pretended that the Taliban were doing the drug business but the news that the Taliban are again stopping it shows this to be a total fabrication designed to get the US public mad at the wrong people for ideological reasons.

Just as during the Vietnam War, I have a long memory!  The heroin trade from the Golden Triangle was blamed on the Vietcong, not the rulers we installed in Cambodia, South Vietnam and elsewhere.  Vietnam sentences 30 heroin smugglers to death this week due to the surge in opium growing in Asia as communists lose power.  They always stop that trade just like the Taliban and when things loosen up and capitalists take over, voila!  Opium production rises rapidly.

Last month, Relics from Opium War returned to China.  The British attacked China in order to expand the opium trade which they carried from India and Afghanistan to China and this was done to stop the China/Britain trade deficit.  The Chinese exported more than Britain and the government in China was cracking down on addiction for the same reason: to stop the trade profits going to Britain!  Bombay and Singapore were once tiny towns until the Brits took over and turned them into major opium export centers.

And so there it is: drug business is all about trade deficits and profits and is very much a capitalist venture.  Governments try to stop the business and capitalists make huge profits from the business.  Which is why I think all people who want to be addicts should be allowed to take safe, cheap drugs to keep them bonked out.  Obviously, many people like this state of being.  And capitalism sets the stage for this sort of mindlessness.