Friday 26 June 2009

Conspiracy Theory Of The Week

The BBC ran a nice fluffy article yesterday titled Stoned wallabies make crop circles. The comments beneath it are delightfully funny, but it's this that caught my eye:

Australia supplies about 50% of the world's legally-grown opium used to make morphine and other painkillers.

Hmmm. We also know that one of the reasons/excuses given for NATO troops hanging around in Afghanisatan, years after achieving the perfectly legitimate aim of overthrowing the Taliban, was to reduce the amount of poppy cultivation (which has backfired most spectacularly, of course).

Now, is it possible, just possible, that the reason why Australia is willing to deploy a disproportionate number of troops is to preserve its own quasi-monopoly? Wouldn't it be cheaper and better all round for drug companies to source their opiates from Afghanistan?

Just askin', is all.

6 comments:

Lola said...

Yes. Next.

Macheath said...

Well spotted! So that's the missing link in the equation - I've been wondering about it since last year: Pa Peachum's doctor warned of an impending morphine shortage the same week as the BBC showed Afghan poppy fields being destroyed.

Henry North London 2.0 said...

Yes, The plain fact of the matter is that there is only one factory making diamorphine in Britain because the other one burnt down and hasnt been replaced

We could solve a heck of a lot of problems by just buying up their crop

JuliaM said...

Absolutely agree! The cost to Gaia would be lessened too, Afghanistan's a lot closer than Oz.

See, even the Greens couldn't argue against that one!

Costello said...

I thought likewise when i read that article yesterday. The way in which we are destroying one of the few valuable resources the Afghans have with no justification other than to keep the product from reaching our streets is absolutely immoral.

James Higham said...

Ah, Henry, I wasn't aware of that.