Lebanon Returns to Opium Cultivation
When one country stops, another is always out there waiting in the shadows to pick up the slack. With the recent ban on Opium Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan considered a "success", Lebanon has stepped up to fill the gap.
Reprinted from the Middle East Newsline
NICOSIA [MENL] -- Lebanon has once again become a center of opium trafficking.
Western diplomatic sources said opium has returned to the Bekaa Valley. They said the opium poppies have been cultivated, harvested and turned into morphine and heroin. The drugs are then smuggled to the West. The sources said so far the amount of opium production appears to be on a small scale. But they said the rate of production could continue over the next year. Opium poppies are planted in October. The major producers of opium in the region are Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey. Lebanese sources have confirmed that opium production has been renewed in the country. They said Lebanese authorities have ignored opium cultivation. At its height nearly a decade ago, Lebanon grew 16,000 hectares of opium in the area of Baalbek and the Bekaa Valley. The size of the opium harvest is said to be less than 1,000 hectares. Every 1,000 square meters of poppies is said to yield up to three kilos of opium.
