Thread: Drug Corporations Push Taliban Opium for Medical Use - Follow the Money

Monday, June 11, 2012

Drug Corporations Push Taliban Opium for Medical Use

Susanne Posel, Contributor

In 1998, scientists at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, discovered that noscapine could be used to combat tumors. Noscapine is derived from the opium poppy plant; the same source of heroin and the painkiller, morphine.

The drug version, called noscapine, is used as a cough suppressant in some countries. It is now being praised as a promising cancer-fighting agent.

Noscapine has been used in trial testing on animals and human cancer cells. It has proven to be effective in shrinking breast and prostate tumors; while possibly being a preventative for metastasis (the spread of tumors throughout the body).

The production of noscapine may prove difficult because of the labor-intensive methods used to extract the natural chemical. While industrial manufacturing of commercial opioids are froth with chemicals necessary to produce drugs, they are low on noscapine or are not present at all.

Since 1998, a new study by scientists at the University of York and funded by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, proves that synthetic noscapine (engineered opium) can be created by cross-breeding poppy plants and enhancing the production of noscapine by clustering together 10 genes responsible for its production.

Tim Bowser, co-author and lead researcher and developer for GlaxoSmithKline’s Australian opiates division said:

The fact that the genes are grouped in a cluster means that plant breeding becomes faster and easier. [We] are using this discovery to develop high-yielding commercial noscapine poppies in order to establish a reliable route of supply.

Australia produces large quantities of legal opioids. After negotiations in the '60s and '70s, the US government imports opium from Turkey for medical use.

The opium harvest fields in Afghanistan, controlled by the US military, are the perfect stores to obtain large amounts of poppy plants for study by drug corporations



Continued Below

Most of the opium grown in Afghanistan is under the supervision of the Taliban and US troops in the region. While the Taliban has imposed a ban on opium production just after the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Northern Alliance, which was supported by the US military, began protecting the fields where the raw production of opium was most prevalent.

The UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime oversee the UN’s Drug Control Program which estimates that in 2006, Afghanistan supplied 92% of the world’s opium.

In conjunction with the CIA, NATO and British military forces, Afghanistan has been forced to continue its opium growing operations.

Writer William Blum said:

CIA-supported Mujahedeen rebels [who in 2001 were part of the Northern Alliance] engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting against the Soviet-supported government and its plans to reform the very backward Afghan society.

However, the UN and WHO are more concerned with keeping the supply of opium flowing for “medical purposes” which is extremely profitable.

The World Health Organization (WHO) surmised that there is a severe shortage of opium-derived pain medications. The UN assumes Afghanistan could produce as estimated 4,200 tons of opium that WHO could be using to treat those patients in severe pain.

The discovery of synthetic opium could be the answer WHO was looking for.

Physicians have been using noscapine off-label to treat cancer because it is approved for use in some countries. Research data suggests noscapine could be a treatment for:

• ovarian cancer
• myeloma
• lung cancer
• colon cancer
• breast and prostate tumors

In 2009, Johnson & Johnson purchased Cougar Biotechnology, a pharmaceutical corporation, with the express purpose of getting into the synthetic opium industry. They intended to cash in on the laboratory-created chemical and will push for more trials since the discovery of GlaxoSmithKline.

Susanne Posel is the Chief Editor of Occupy Corporatism. Our alternative news site is dedicated to reporting the news as it actually happens; not as it is spun by the corporately funded mainstream media. You can find us on our Facebook page.


Activist Post: Drug Corporations Push Taliban Opium for Medical Use

http://www.alipac.us/f19/what-our-ch...nistan-258351/

http://www.alipac.us/f19/cia-drug-sm...tter-p-258317/

Taliban Patsy Sentenced to Life for Dealing CIA Heroin

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
June 12, 2012
Fall guy Haji Bagcho was sentenced to life in prison today for trafficking heroin in Afghanistan. U.S. officialdom characterized Bagcho as “one of the largest heroin traffickers in the world and who used proceeds of his drug sales to support the Taliban insurgency,” according to the Washington Post.

Bagcho’s heroin business, however, paled in comparison to the one set-up by the CIA in Afghanistan and he was likely thrown in the slammer for life because the agency does not like competition.

The Taliban, itself a creation of the CIA, had banned the production of opium following the Afghan civil war after the Soviets were defeated. “The success of Afghanistan’s 2000 drug eradication program under the Taliban government was recognized by the United Nations” as admirable and that “no other country was able to implement a comparable program.”

In October of 2001, the UN acknowledged that the Taliban reduced opium production in Afghanistan from 3300 tons in 2000 to 185 tons in 2001 (see Afghan heroin & the CIA). Following the U.S. invasion, Afghanistan became the number one heroin producer, producing 3,750 tons in 2002. By 2006, that number skyrocketed to 6,100 metric tons.

“CIA-supported Mujahedeen rebels [who in 2001 were part of the Northern Alliance] engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting against the Soviet-supported government,” William Blum noted in The Real Drug Lords.

“The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liaison with NATO occupation forces and the British military. In recent developments, British occupation forces have promoted opium cultivation through paid radio advertisements,” Michel Chossudovsky wrote in 2007.

U.S. troops were specifically ordered to ignore heroin and opium when they discovered it on patrol, an ex-Green Beret told author James Risen in 2003. Assistant Secretary of State Bobby Charles complained that “[Defense Secretary] Rumsfeld didn’t want drugs to become a core mission.”

In 2010, we reported on a Fox News segment where Gerald Rivera talked with an occupation soldier about U.S. support of the opium trade in Afghanistan. The soldier told Rivera he did not like supporting Afghan opium production, but insisted the U.S. had turned a blind eye to the cultivation and he cited the excuse of cultural sensitivity.



Prior to the Taliban’s business faux pas, the CIA worked with Pakistan’s ISI to turn heroin profits into lucre for covert activities. Moreover, if not for the trafficking of heroin, Pakistan’s legitimate economy would have collapsed, the Financial Times wrote in August of 2001. Much of the money was deposited in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the preferred bank of intelligence agencies looking to launder money, hide drug profits, and engage in other financial crimes.
But it was not just Pakistan that would have collapsed.

“In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital,” said Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in 2009. “In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor.”

Former Managing Director and board member of Wall Street investment bank Dillon Read, Catherine Austin Fitts, has long alleged that the banksters launder imponderable amounts of drug money.

“According to the Department of Justice, the US launders between $500 billion – $1 trillion annually. I have little idea what percentage of that is narco dollars, but it is probably safe to assume that at least $100-200 billion relates to US drug import-exports and retail trade,” writes Fitts.

2nd Video: Wayne Madsen Reports CIA Control of Afghanistan's Opium Fields on Alex Jones Tv 1/2 Wayne Madsen Reports CIA Control of Afghanistan's Opium Fields on Alex Jones Tv 1/2 - YouTube


» Taliban Patsy Sentenced to Life for Dealing CIA Heroin Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

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How the CIA Ran Crack to the Streets of America

By Shepard Ambellas
theintelhub.com
June 16, 2012

It has now been openly admitted that a “secret army” in conjunction with the CIA actually was responsible for spreading crack cocaine onto the streets of America.

The Director of the CIA was questioned in a town meeting on that fact that the CIA was indeed responsible for bringing crack to the streets when he replied;

“I will check into it and if any wrong doing is found he will hold them accountable.”

We know that the CIA and the Contra’s have been running drugs for years, making large drops at key airports with low security measures in place.

Is this selective targeting of a certain race, creed in part of a eugenics operation, or is profiteering to blame?



How the CIA Ran Crack to the Streets of America :