AFGHANISTAN WAR FUELS LOCAL HEROIN TRADE

There is a straight line running directly from Afghanistan's massive
oversupply of opium to the misery of heroin addicts on the streets of
Vancouver.

And Canada's military misadventure in Afghanistan at U.S. President
George W. Bush's request is ensuring a drug disaster.

The results will be more deaths of Canadian soldiers bravely fighting
for our country as they unknowingly enable growth of the most evil
trade in the world, drug dealing that also kills countless victims
right here at home.

Sound far-fetched? Not at all.

On Sept. 2 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime issued a
startling report that received little media attention.

Afghanistan now grows not only 92 per cent of the entire world supply
of opium, used to make heroin, but there is now 30 per cent more opium
available than total global consumption!

So much for defending democracy and promoting development in
Afghanistan for five years.

The oversupply can only lead to one chilling result - cheaper heroin
on streets of Vancouver and the world, and a relentless push by drug
dealers to find more customers.

Thank the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan for the massive return of
the opium/heroin trade. Thank Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
for allowing our military to be put in a terrible position.

The Taliban government of Afghanistan banned production of opium and
by 2001 the UN reported that opium poppies had been overwhelmingly
replaced by wheat and other crops.

But since the Afghanistan invasion opium production has skyrocketed,
with Taliban fighters now promoting poppy farming while western armies
can neither provide alternatives for poor farmers nor control the
countryside.

Opium grown in Afghanistan jumped an astonishing 60 per cent last
year. Only six of the countries 34 provinces are opium free and in the
southern province of Helmand production has jumped by 162 per cent.

"The news is very bad. On the opium front today in some of the
provinces of Afghanistan, we face a state of emergency," Antonio Maria
Costa, chief of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said. "The southern
part of Afghanistan was displaying the ominous hallmarks of incipient
collapse, with large-scale drug cultivation and trafficking,
insurgency and terrorism, crime and corruption."

"Heroin habits in the West put huge sums of money into the pockets of
criminals and insurgents who destabilize Afghanistan and kill soldiers
and civilians alike," Costa added.

So while Harper and the Conservatives continue to defend putting
Canadian troops in harm's way in Afghanistan, the military mission has
ended up promoting skyrocketing production of one of the most deadly
drugs in the world.