Narratives From The 'War on Drugs' from the Inside

Insert geopolitics.

Excerpted from a report by the Congressional Budget Office, prepared at the request of the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce:

Several factors have contributed to the opioid crisis: an increase in the prescribing of opioids, changes in illegal opioid markets, and greater demand for opioids among people in some demographic groups that have experienced declines in real wages and social cohesion. Those factors have reinforced each other.

Real wages and social cohesion. Interesting that Washington is aware of this and are doing nothing to fix the problem. Why, I wonder? Could it be that they created the problem?

We created a problem to sell you drugs that would solve it, it’s brilliant.

Tom Macdonald

Recently John Kiriakou appeared on a podcast and this being at the moment that every headline had something about U.S.A.I.D. in the title the first story he told during the six-hour podcast — yes, I finished it — was a story from back when he was working under John Kerry on the Senate-Foreign Relations Committee.

If you don’t know who John is, he is ex-CIA, who left the agency in 2004, and between 2007 and 2009, went to ABC News to blow the whistle on our “enhanced” interrogation program overseas during the War on Terror. By “enhanced” interrogation, I mean torture. We were using torture to interrogate “possible” terrorists.

After he blew the whistle and left the agency he was hired by the Senate-Foreign Relations committee.

The Obama Administration chose to indict him in 2012 for violating the Espionage Act. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2013. Since than he’s written several books and made hundreds of appearances on podcasts and is a radio host for the Russian-owned Western-friendly Sputnik.

So, we were all aware of the USAID funding set aside for heroine cultivation in Afghanistan, but maybe you weren’t aware of the reason for this, as a foreign policy initiative, and the unintended consequences that are now our present.

First off, I must say this, I am against any cartel of any kind pushing the drugs that have poisoned my friends and family for decades, I am against them being pushed into any country.

So, John goes on to tell a story about how Afghanistan became the producer of 93% of the world’s heroine. What happened was after the American occupation and the overthrow of the Taliban, opium production became the only crop the Afghans were cultivating due to profitability. Remember the Taliban was a Theocracy and heroine production was against their religion.

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I have heard numerous accounts of soldiers — personally and in public forums — from the War in Afghanistan come home to tell stories of guarding poppy fields for local farmers. There’s the Geraldo Rivera clip (inserted below).

And America’s favorite propaganda outlet Voice of America.

So, this isn’t conspiracy theory. These are facts of life.

As the Senior investigator for the Senate-Foreign Relations Committee John goes over to Afghanistan to write a report on why 93% of the world’s heroine production was coming from Afghanistan, who we were currently occupying. So, he flew to Bagram Airbase in Kabul, Afghanistan, he said he wanted to visit the Kandahar and Helmand province in the South of Afghanistan which were the leaders in poppy cultivation.

The soldiers at Bagram immediately give him a hard time and he’s forced to “pull rank” to get them to take him to do his investigation.

It worked, they had no choice, so they begrudgingly take him on a helicopter to Kandahar and then Helmand.

While in the Helmand province he runs into USAID who are digging water wells just outside of a poppy field that stretches back as far as the eyes can see.

He meets a farmer and asks what he thinks is a good question, and it probably is, “Why do you grow poppy (which only has one season per year) when you could instead grow something with two seasons?”

The man frustratingly answers, “Look, the Americans told me in 2001 if I told them where the Arabs were I could grow as much poppy as I wanted—”

Jon asks, “—what Americans told you, you could grow poppy?”

Before the farmer could answer, the soldiers who were escorting Jon, had heard the whole exchange and said, “That’s enough, we’ve got to go, there’s a threat.” It was just them out there.

Jon knew there was no threat, but he went along with it. He’d heard enough.

He gets home, contacts the DEA, meets with an agent and the agent tells him, “You’re never gonna get this paper published. What you don’t realize is this poppy goes to Russia and Iran. We want them addicted to heroin; it keeps their societies weak.”

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This is where my knowledge comes in. As a curious, inquisitive addict.

There was a show that came out around 2014, that created a real scare in the heroine-user community called Drugs Inc. and more specifically the episode called “Krokadil.”

(If you’d like to see it, I posted the only version I could find of it on YouTube. It’s only partial and age-restricted)

It was about the drug called desomorphine which is created by breaking down codeine that is bought OTC at local pharmacies in other countries.

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By the way, to be clear, it is not actually a “flesh-eating drug.” What it is however that causes these horrific images in infection and gangrene from a process that contains things like gasoline. Here’s the problem, they are shooting up a drug with the remnants of gasoline. It’s just dirty and dangerous and should not come close to being shot into a human body, but the drug they are attempting to produce is not a “Flesh-Eating Drug” but allow me to digress.

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In countries where you could get codeine easier than heroine is where drugs like Krok blow up. So, places where codeine is an over-the-counter drug is perfect for something like this to fester.

In the video it was Russia and Georgia. Back then the reason these places were using this was because heroine was so very hard to get.

Now, if this story is true and I sense no lies in it, it solves a question I’ve long since had, why are we getting the fentanyl here in America?

Now, I’m hearing from people in sober living that they are having cases of people coming into detox with desomorphine in their system, so I must ask the question, is filling the demand for heroine in Eastern Europe causing us, here in America, to end up with a thousand times more dangerous alternatives?

Is it time for American companies to cut out these evil middlemen?

Dude, codeine is as legal (probably more) in Canada and Mexico (our neighbor) as it was in E. European cold countries, the next “flesh-eating drug” doc could very well be in America.

Ten years ago, there was no such thing as a fentanyl pill. Now chemical companies in China are producing precursors for meth and fentanyl and sending them to super labs in Mexico to be sold to Americans to keep our society weak.

The same thing happened with meth. Here in Kentucky, in 2001, all nasal decongestants containing any form of ephedrine became controlled substances to stem the ability for the drugs to be manufactured here at home.

I know, I was waste deep in these waters when that law was passed and spent many years following networking with other meth cooks to come up with the Sudafed to make a batch.

Then, in 2013, meth, in one Summer, went from being American made and sold for $130 a gram to being extremely potent ice that cost $55 a gram, and then $40, and then $30, and heroine went from being something that rarely killed to being fentanyl that kills even the most seasoned vets.

Meth is now so cheap that anyone that can come up with $5 can get the shit and so strong, every American city has been decimated by it. Leaving once productive members of society, now as psychotics yelling at trees for looking at them crazy.

If our plan was to weaken our “enemies” societies, it seems we might’ve reaped what we sowed.

The Geopolitics of Drug Trafficking

Some things I found out in researching this story.

In 2001, the Taliban had eradicated a majority of the the poppies in all of Afghanistan.

Six months later, we overthrew the Taliban.

Most people believe Osama bin Ladin belonged to the Taliban, but he didn’t. In fact, they were an entirely separate entity. A theocracy, no doubt, but so is Muhammad bin Salman’s regime, in Saudi Arabia and they actually did harbor Bin Laden.

Since we pulled out of Afghanistan and the Taliban took back over heroine production was reduced by 99%.

In the 1990’s Afghanistan produced 70% of the world’s heroin. At a time that no one in my neck of the woods had even seen the stuff outside of movies.

In 2000, the Taliban started shutting down poppy farms and heroine production labs. Within one year they had reduced the poppy’s grown by 30% and the heroine manufactured by 70%.

In 2002, our soldiers started protecting poppy farmers and keeping their fields secure.

Mullah Haibatullah imposed a ban on drugs in Afghanistan in April 2022, only seven months after the Taliban took power.

High resolution imagery shows that in the province of Helmand poppy cultivation has fallen from more than 120,000 hectares in 2022 to less than 1,000 hectares in 2023 – a reduction in this one province alone that surpasses any prior national poppy ban in Afghanistan, even the Taliban prohibition of 2000/01.

While cultivation persists – and may have even increased - in parts of the northeast, such as Badakhshan, it is clear the stage is set for the lowest levels of poppy cultivation since the Taliban ban of 2000/01.

Poppy Cultivation-Helmand Province-2022-2023

The Taliban’s efforts to ban poppy began in the spring of 2022 just after the ban was announced in early April. In particular, the spring and summer planted crops in the south and southwest were targeted for eradication. The authorities didn’t touch the standing crop – the one planted in the fall of 2021 - that was only a week or two from harvest as that would have provoked widespread unrest so close to the harvest season and after farmers had invested considerable time and resources in their poppy fields.

That was nice of them.

Now I know this is an ugly position to take, but unfortunately, it’s true. The more poppy is eradicated world-wide, the more fentanyl that makes it into our backyard.

We play geopolitics with a chessboard made of sand. Every evil move we make around the world leads to blowback back home. From the Mujahideen to 9/11.

And from the Afghan poppies to fentanyl on our streets. This is just another way that involving ourselves over there is causing turmoil over here. It’s not what we voted for. The constitution doesn’t give anyone the authority to do it. And Americans are dying over it. It’s time to make it stop.

Thank you for reading.

Jordan Lee Canter

Editor-in-Chief, The Freedom Manifesto