Latest Opium Stories

By Frank Jack Daniel MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - In a surprise reversal, Mexican President Vicente Fox will not sign a widely criticized reform to decriminalize the possession of small quantities of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, his office said on Wednesday. The president's office said the law, which also toughened sentences for dealing and holding larger amounts of the intoxicants, would be sent back to Congress for revision. "In our country the possession of drugs and their consumption...

By Noel Randewich MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Possessing marijuana, cocaine and even heroin will no longer be a crime in Mexico if the drugs are carried in small amounts for personal use, under legislation passed by Congress. The measure given final passage by senators in a late night session on Thursday allows police to focus on their battle against major drug dealers, the government says, and President Vicente Fox is expected to sign it into law. "This law provides more judicial tools...

By Yousuf AzimyLASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan farmer Abdul Ghani looks over his field carpeted in small, green plants and knows this crop will feed his family.His field is covered in opium poppies, now only leaves about 4 inches high and yet to flower.Ghani explains his simple logic that makes him part of an illicit industry that the government says is funding terrorism and threatens to destroy the country."We're very poor people. To feed our families we grow poppies,"...

By Ed Cropley PHONGSALI, Laos (Reuters) - The mountains of northern Laos have changed color. In the past five years, the opium poppy fields that for the last two centuries lent splashes of color to the pervading green of the jungle have become a thing of the past. In their stead, small plantations of tea, peach trees and even asparagus are springing up in the heart of the "Golden Triangle," the lawless opium-producing region at the junction of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar. "In 2001 at...

By Sue Pleming WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Opium production and trafficking make up a third of Afghanistan's economy, and security issues and corruption hamper efforts to eradicate the drug, the State Department said on Wednesday. In its annual worldwide drugs survey, the department said Afghanistan's huge drugs trade severely damaged efforts to rebuild the country's economy and threatened regional stability overall. "Dangerous security conditions and corruption constrain government and...

By Sue PlemingWASHINGTON -- Increased political clout of coca growers in Bolivia and Peru has farmers growing more coca in a trend that is causing concern in Washington, the U.S. State Department said in a report on Wednesday.The influence of coca growing associations, known as cocaleros, was greatest in Bolivia, where coca association founder and farmer Evo Morales won the presidency in December."We are concerned about the inability thus far of Bolivia's new president to articulate...

By Guy Faulconbridge MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's illegal drugs trade has topped $15 billion a year as criminal groups flood the country with heroin from Afghanistan, a senior official from the national drugs control agency said on Thursday. Drug use has soared since the fall of the Soviet Union, with Russians becoming major consumers of illegal drugs trafficked by well-organized gangs, including synthetic drugs from Europe as well as heroin from Afghanistan. "In Russia the narcotics...

By Ed Cropley DOI TAILANG, Myanmar (Reuters) - The heroin trade is burgeoning in Myanmar's Golden Triangle, a reality hidden from the international community by the lies and cunning of the former Burma's military junta, a top rebel leader said. In an interview with Reuters in his jungle hideout on the Thai-Myanmar border, Shan State Army (SSA) supremo Colonel Yod Suk rejected U.N. studies suggesting opium poppy cultivation in the world's second largest heroin producer was falling. "The...

By Tim GaynorPINO GORDO, Mexico -- Mexican Indians have grown maize, worshiped nature and lived by the light of pine torches in the canyons of the western Sierra Madre mountains for centuries. But this way of life is abruptly changing.Now armed drug gangs are forcing them to plant opium poppies and marijuana in their ancestral lands, which lie in a notorious region dubbed Mexico's 'Golden Triangle' of drug trafficking.The rugged point where the states of Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa meet is...

By Manny Mogato MANILA (Reuters) - Traffickers have been shifting to the manufacture of amphetamine-type drugs in Asia as cultivation and production of heroin drops sharply, a senior United Nations official said on Monday. Akira Fujino, head of the Bangkok-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said there had been an alarming increase in abuse of "shabu" and ecstasy in Southeast Asia over the last few years, as shown by a rise in the number of narcotics laboratories found. "There's an...