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A Chinese Restaurant Operator is in big trouble after he laced his noodles with Opium drugs in an attempt to keep customers coming back. Chinese Guangxi Province-based restaurant intended to get patrons addicted and increase the chances of them coming back for more. The restaurateur’s dirty trick was uncovered by mistake, after someone who ate at his local in Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County tested positive for morphine, the active component in opium, during a police inspection. The shocked man insisted that he had not willingly taken drugs, and told investigators that the only thing he had ingested that he couldn’t...

Researchers at the University of York and the British Museum have discovered traces of opiates preserved inside a distinctive vessel dating back to the Late Bronze Age. Vessels of this type, known as 'base-ring juglets', have long been thought to have links with opium use because when inverted they resemble the seed head of the opium poppy; they are known to have been widely traded in the eastern Mediterranean ca. 1650 - 1350BC. Researchers used a range of analytical techniques to study a particular juglet housed in the British Museum, which is a sealed vessel, allowing the contents inside to...

Today the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy released the results of the annual U.S. Government estimate measuring poppy cultivation and potential opium production in Afghanistan.The U.S. Government estimate of “Afghanistan Poppy Cultivation and Potential Opium Production” found poppy cultivation decreased in 2019 compared to 2018, but potential pure opium production increased.  Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan declined 28 percent, from 221,000 hectares in 2018 to 160,000 hectares in 2019.  Conversely, potential pure opium production increased by 21 percent, from 5,550* metric tons in 2018 to 6,700 metric tons in 2019.  Low opium prices at planting time drove the...

On January 3, 2020, near Baghdad's airport, a U.S. air raid targeted Qasem Soleimani, commander of Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (“IRGC’s”) terrorist arm. He was killed instantly. To understand how important this is, one needs to understand who Qasem Soleimani (1957-2020) was. Soleimani, a one-time construction worker and weightlifter, joined the IRGC after the 1979 revolution and soon headed one of the IRGC’s main cadres. Khomeini assigned Soleimani to suppress a Kurdish movement in Mahabad, Western Azerbaijan. Soleimani's brutality earned him command over a Quds Guard Corps unit in Kerman. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) gave Soleimani opportunities...

Despite the U.S. declaring an “Open Door Policy” in support of China’s sovereignty, U.S. Marines on May 31, 1900 invaded China to help defeat the Boxer Rebellion. With imperial Great Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Japan, and Russia trying to carve China into colonies, Secretary of State John Hay in the fall of 1899 declared the United States would honor an “Open Door Policy” that respected Chinese territorial and administrative integrity and allowed equal trading privileges for all nations. Nineteenth-century imperialists had forced China’s ruling Qing Dynasty to accept foreign dominance over much of China’s economic affairs. Two Opium Wars with...

This report examines the U.S. counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan, detailing how DOD and State, USAID, and the DEA tried to deter farmers and traffickers from growing and trading of opium.

**SNIP** In a statement on Monday, the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office reported a shocking find: a small poppy field on a private plot near a road in Moss Landing, about 15 miles northeast of Monterey, that could produce some four pounds of heroin annually. “Over the weekend the Sheriff’s Office Investigations Division eradicated one acre of opium poppies, which contained approximately 27,000 plants of opium poppies and another 16,500 harvested plants,” the statement said. Those plants could have produced a pound and a half of heroin. The plot could have been harvested three times a year. “The street value of...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Former Mexican President Vicente Fox proposed on Wednesday the legalization of opium poppy production as a way to help end bloody turf battles fought by drug cartels in various parts of the country. Fox served as president from 2000-2006 with the center-right National Action Party but has since distanced himself from the party. In the past, he has also advocated for the legalization of marijuana. “The plants themselves are not harmful, we make them harmful, (especially) the criminals who use them for evil purposes,” Fox said at a pro-marijuana event in the capital. He also implored...

Jointly published by the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon and the Middle East Forum   Vol. 2   No. 6 Table of ContentsMEIB Main Page 1 July 2000  Lockerbie Trial Document: Susan Lindauer Deposition4 December 1998 Last month, MEIB reported that Dr. Richard Fuisz, a major CIA operative in Syria during the 1980s, met with a congressional staffer by the name of Susan Lindauer in 1994 and told her that that the perpetrators of the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland were based in Syria [see "The Lockerbie Bombing Trial: Is Libya Being...

Dec 29 (Reuters) - Zach Lazarus, chief executive officer of A Green Alternative, a marijuana dispensary in San Diego, California, has lost count every time he re-opened a bank account after it was closed because of his connection to the cannabis industry. Lazarus has had to play a game of "whack-a-mole" with banks, likening his frustrations to a popular arcade game in which a player repeatedly gets rid of something only to have it re-appear somewhere else. Lazarus and other marijuana business owners in the $8 billion industry resort to cash-only transactions for business and to pay employees because they...

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S.-NATO coalition in Afghanistan has pulverized 25 Taliban labs used to process opium and its deadly heroin derivative, depriving the narco-jihadists of $80 million in illegal drug proceeds in the first three weeks of an unprecedented counternarcotics air campaign. Since November 20, U.S. troops and their Afghan allies have been targeting the Taliban jihadists’ opium business in their Helmand stronghold, the top-poppy producing province in Afghanistan. Watch a M142 HIMARS conduct an artillery strike on a Taliban narcotics production facility in Helmand province Dec. 8, destroying nearly $1 million in direct Taliban revenues. "In the face...

As many of you will recall, Obama made a trip to Pakistan when he was at Occidental College. I am seeing indicators that this relates to the Awans' network and to Iraq and Iran's nuclear programs, which I'm putting out here for others to help fill the missing pieces in and to get this to the right people. First, a recap of Obama's Pakistan trip:Obama’s Russia Problem: Obama's Links to Soviet-era Spy Rings and Terrorist NetworksAt Occidental College, Obama became involved in radical student politics, deliberately networking with activist students and professors, as he mentions in his autobiography. In 1981,...

While Nicholson acknowledged that the Pakistanis had taken military action against other violent extremist groups, he said that Islamabad needed to act against the Afghan Taliban, which has found sanctuary inside Pakistan since 2001. "The offensive operations against sanctuaries would be in other areas that we've identified with the Pakistani leadership on a number of occasions," he said. The general would not say how much time the US would allow for Pakistan to change its behavior before taking additional actions to compel Islamabad to crack down on Afghan Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. "As you've heard our president say, as you've...

Reclining on bunk beds while sucking on opium pipes, these haunting photos provide a rare glimpse into life in America's 19th century opium dens that prompted the country's first crackdown on drugs. Established by the Chinese, the first opium dens in the US sprung up in San Francisco's Chinatown during the 1840s and 1850s, and were soon being used by people from all walks of society. The opium rush was at its most prevalent during the 1880s and 1890s, which coincided with the rise of the temperance movement. Its popularity eventually resulted in a string of legislative measures being introduced...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Federal authorities in San Diego say they have seized one of the largest loads ever in the U.S. of the potent synthetic opiate Fentanyl. An indictment unsealed Monday says federal drug agents seized over 97 pounds (44 kg) of the drug, most of it from a house in San Diego. A U.S. attorney's statement says the drug is so powerful that the amount represents millions of lethal doses. Drug traffickers use it to strengthen heroin or make counterfeit painkiller pills.

Eight years ago, President Obama pledged to wind down the war in Iraq and redouble efforts to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. “As president, I will make the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be,” he said during a campaign speech. “This is a war that we have to win.” Lasting peace, Mr. Obama said, would depend on not only defeating the Taliban but helping “Afghans grow their economy from the bottom up.” He added, “We cannot lose Afghanistan to a future of narco-terrorism.” Now, at the twilight of his presidency, these goals...

Thirty-five restaurants across China, including a popular Beijing hot pot chain, have been found illegally using opium poppies as seasoning, one of the more unusual practices bedeviling the country's food regulators. Five restaurants are being prosecuted while 30 others, ranging from Shanghai dumpling joints to noodle shops in southwestern Chongqing, are under investigation, said the China Food and Drug Administration. Cases of cooks sprinkling ground poppy powder, which contains low amounts of opiates like morphine and codeine, in soup and seafood are not new in China, though it is unclear whether they can effectively hook a customer or deliver a...

Senate Bill 539, which would prohibit the naming of public buildings and roads in California after Confederate leaders, advanced from its sole policy committee Tuesday on a 7-1 vote. It heads next to the Assembly Appropriations Committee for fiscal consideration.

Definition of Forbes family This article is about the Forbes family related to US Senator John Kerry. For information about the Forbes family associated with Forbes magazine, see Forbes family (publishers). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Forbes family of China and Boston, of which US Senator John Forbes Kerry and John Murray Forbes are members, amassed a huge fortune in the China trade, initially trading North American furs and manufactured goods for tea and other goods from China. Forbes also made a considerable fortune smuggling opium during the Opium Wars. The British wanted to keep a monopoly on supplying the Chinese with opium...

Red and purple blossoms with fat, opium-filled bulbs blanket the remote creek sides and gorges of the Filo Mayor mountains in the southern state of Guerrero. The multibillion-dollar Mexican opium trade starts here, with poppy farmers so poor they live in wood-plank, tin-roofed shacks with no indoor plumbing.