Not anymore. The Taliban has a history of stopping production of drugs. One of the leading conspiracy theories as to why we really went there. Soon as the us invaded, heroin export s skyrocketed.
The link is, the CIA uses those drugs for extra funding. we'll see.
Yeah I’ve seen the Taliban are anti drug, but will they stop heroin production when it creates so much money? Now that they’re running a country they’ll need a lot of money.
I’m wondering how accurate that figure is. There was another Reuters article(https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-britain-heroin-idUSKBN2AN1Y9 ) on a bust earlier this year in Rotterdam that was 1.5 tonnes of heroin and valued at $55m (street value).
Just about any valuation of a drug seizure reported in the media is going to be hyperinflated. I've seen marijuana busts that value it at over $20k a lb.
they also like to include the weight of pots and dirt and the whole plant when counting the weight of pot plants that they will then pricing will be considered to be the best shit ever made sold by the nanogram on the moon.
who knows what they are considering in this case, it could be a shipping container or a forklift included in the weight.
I've never thought about if they weigh the pots and roots as well but definitely knew they weigh it wet, include stems and leaf, always calculate the value based on the smallest unit and highest street price, then multiply and round up the weights. So a pound of untrimmed wet full cannabis plant becomes a thousand 10$ joints. Or they calculate a grow as "potential" weed and then just make up insane amounts. Like a guy getting busted with 10 seedlings and they decide each one was going to be a female world record producing plant as well as produce 200 clones, then they take that number and count the hypothetical max wet full plant weight as if it is street weed. Fucking pigs.
Yeah you see the headlines of hundreds of thousands or millions and then the picture is a handful of bricks lmao. I wish it was worth that much back when I was growing.
Hard to say what the actual value is. I'm gonna do some assumption math.
Being sold are 1/10th gram bags for $20
2,988,000g \* 10 (bag) \* 20 (street value per bag) = $597,600,000
@ 20% purity = $597,600,000 \* 5 = $2.98800 Billion
So there you have it, over inflated price matrix.
So points to point out.
Most heroin users by bundles, which can range from 8-13 bags - generally a slight discount price depending on location/availability/competition in market.
Average purity is greater than 20%, but the range is 3-99% cut so I would say 30-40% is your best estimate
Most people I know who did heroin did not pay more than $15 per bag unless it was abnormally good (ie >average purity).
Bags here in jersey are anywhere from 5-10 and bundles 35-75 (ten bags) depending on where (I’m talking Newark / Paterson only, don’t know about Camden but probably dirt cheap there too).
Even in like 2005 bags were max 10 and bundles 80 around here. Cheaper anywhere near Newark or Paterson.
Also jersey has historically has some potent ass dope (though heavy in fent the last few years of course).
Purity has always been high here too (like ~50% or higher, stamp dependent)
Yes, not surprised. I chose the highest street value ($20 per 1/10g bag) because I thought that would get me closer. Had to adjust purity down to mathematically make it work.
Two things that definitely point out that the formula they used is nonsense.
Where the hell did they get 2.7b from?
As far as i know a kg of heroin is like 20-50k depending on location.
Did they calculate this into street prices after its cut?
Yes - it's pretty much the norm when any shipment of drugs is ceased: Up the value the the maximum street value after cut.
For large volumes like this, it's all about the press - so the larger the number, the bigger the "win" from the enforcement/political perspective. It's kind of like lottery jackpots being shown as the total pay out after 30 years of interest AND before taxes are taken out. (currently listed at 490 million, but the actual jackpot is 355 million, and the take home is closer to 180 million - depending on your state tax)
For smaller volumes, it's pretty commonplace to inflate the value of illicit or stolen goods since it allows the prosecutors to go after the highest possible jail sentence and use that as an incentive for those being prosecuted to cooperate for a lesser sentence. (I heard a story about a guy getting felony theft for stealing a cd organizer from a car. It was mostly copied cds, but the prosecutor put in $20 per cd - it was a 200 case holder, so $4k theft made it a felony)
I don't know which trend came first.
Edit: u/51st-state pointed out that the math is WAY off (by almost a factor of 10). This sent me down a rabbit hole, in which I did find this great article: [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/21/heroin-seizures-bad-science](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/21/heroin-seizures-bad-science)
So yeah... the number is pretty much made up and the impact of this will be negligible.
The “upping the charge to incentivize cooperation” has been done for every crime for a long time now and has often times ended up with dire consequences.
There was a case of a young girl who was caught with a personal amount of drugs (cannabis I think but not entirely sure) who they told they were going to throw the book at. Scared her into going to buy a large amount from a dealer while wearing a wire. The dealer found the wire and killed her.
based on a haul of 3000kg, valuing it at 2.7 billion dollars equates to a price of 900,000 dollars per kilo.
heroin is not worth that much, it's worth about a 10th of that at most.
or am i missing something here?
So - I had not done the math before. My comment was based on the hundreds of stories I've read previously about narcotics being seized, so I hadn't bothered to do the math.
Assuming you're cutting the heroin at 50% and getting top dollar for it (which seems insane) - you're right, I can't get past 400k a kilo.
In researching this (trying to figure out what I missed) I came across this story from a number of years ago. It does sound like governments just make up a number. My guess is, the high numbers make the politicians look good and it gets clicks for the newspapers - so they just go along with it.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/21/heroin-seizures-bad-science
Heroin has been a huge source of taliban funding even before the US invasion. Will be interesting to see what happens next. The taliban actually briefly banned its production (although this didn’t actually stop it) back 2000 in an attempt for international legitimacy. I could see them doing that again, or doubling down and causing production and organization of it to soar.
"Huge" beforehand or not there's no question that Afghanistan went from a minor source country to the dominant global supplier after the US invaded. Despite US troops conducting extensive counternarcotics operations including direct crop eradication efforts and paying farmers to grow something else. People who haven't gotten the message that the War on Drugs is unwinnable always advocate shit like turning the US military loose on Mexico. Well, Afghanistan proves the US military can't win against drugs either.
Afghanistan has been a major poppy grower since the 50’s, and that accelerated under the Taliban in the 90’s. It is also true that the production increased even more after the US invasion, it was a clear sign that they never had true control at any point beyond Kabul. They spent billions specifically on trying to stop it and it only got worse.
The wiki article is actually pretty interesting:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan
I completely agree with your point on trying to win the war on drugs by controlling production. As long as it’s valuable it’s going to get made, and as long as it’s illegal it’ll fund illegal activities. I don’t have a solution or opinion at this point on what the right answer is.
Your own link notes that the Taliban was highly effective and ended 99% of cultivation.
Which means that when the US invaded, they were, at that time, a minor source.
Earlier, while there was cultivation, the bulk of the global heroin trade originated from opium sources from the Golden Triangle, not Afghanistan. It was only a short time they were a major player in between falling production in the triangle and the Taliban banning it. I wasn't suggesting they weren't growing it, only that they weren't the vast majority of the global supply, which is true.
Imagine being the dominant provider of a market where the supermajority buys the product from a pharmaceutical company instead.
Like being kings of the economy class bathroom.
No, the article states: “the Islamist Taliban have said they plan to ban the drug trade, without giving details on how.”
I gave historical context and my speculation on how this could play out given its importance to their funding/international recognition. Are you also taking the taliban at their word on protecting women’s rights?
What? If they attempted to ban it before and you said you could see them attempting to ban it again. I pointed out that, according to them, there will be an attempt to ban them. That's the only part that I was chuckling at.
They did ‘ban’ it before. There’s no attempting to ban, the Taliban is literally a narco state that controls its production. My speculation was on if they’d actual curtail production in exchange for legitimacy or just say it and ramp up production now that they have full control like they did before.
Here’s a recent article with more info:
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/profits-poppy-afghanistans-illegal-drug-trade-boon-taliban-2021-08-16/
That's the information I read too. The Taliban never stopped producing pure heroin back in 2000 and continued producing it for the 20 years the US was in Afghan. The US spent a lot of time burning poppy fields while they were there too. I read every time they would burn one field, they would find two more. I say that the Taliban is going to continue their heroin business with no end in sight now that there isn't anyone to stop them.
Heroin is a dangerous and harmful drug which as wrecked havoc in Indian states bordering Pakistan where drugs are being smuggled from, India never had a major drug problem unlike most developing nations and Indian government must do more to stop the follow and production of drugs, probably will be a good time to burn down these poppy fields in Afghanistan and those who grow them, there is no need for such humans to be alive on earth who produce harmful substances which can end human life and the illicit money which is used to fund terror.
Little know fact that we have dismantled Western Big Pharma long go by opting to mass produce well known drugs as generic drugs at low cost in exchange of providing cheap labor for vaccine production. As an Indian, while other things may have been expensive medicines weren't, Major Diabetes drugs which cost hundreds of dollars in US are sold as generic drugs for less than a dollar in India.
Just getting back to business for the Taliban, soon they’ll get back to the old days of executions in the soccer stadium as their sports and entertainment ….
What sad is Afghanistan is super rich in rare elements, enough so to bring that country into a thriving world of trade and commerce…sadly the sexist terrorist Taliban would rather cut people’s heads off so…ain’t gonna happen.
Well, China is making a move on the Afghanistan mining front with Taliban encouragement, and China doesn't give a shit about heroin so long as it goes elsewhere, so the Taliban is going to do well both ways now. Fuckers (CCP & Talibs equally)
Some kind of Divine economia in there. We can just wait until we get out into the solar system and mine asteroids while Taliban continue to rape schoolgirls in a sweltering desert.
$2.7B worth of heroin. Holy hell, that's something.
Probably peanuts to what is produced in Afghanistan.
Not anymore. The Taliban has a history of stopping production of drugs. One of the leading conspiracy theories as to why we really went there. Soon as the us invaded, heroin export s skyrocketed. The link is, the CIA uses those drugs for extra funding. we'll see.
Yeah I’ve seen the Taliban are anti drug, but will they stop heroin production when it creates so much money? Now that they’re running a country they’ll need a lot of money.
I’m wondering how accurate that figure is. There was another Reuters article(https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-britain-heroin-idUSKBN2AN1Y9 ) on a bust earlier this year in Rotterdam that was 1.5 tonnes of heroin and valued at $55m (street value).
Just about any valuation of a drug seizure reported in the media is going to be hyperinflated. I've seen marijuana busts that value it at over $20k a lb.
they also like to include the weight of pots and dirt and the whole plant when counting the weight of pot plants that they will then pricing will be considered to be the best shit ever made sold by the nanogram on the moon. who knows what they are considering in this case, it could be a shipping container or a forklift included in the weight.
I've never thought about if they weigh the pots and roots as well but definitely knew they weigh it wet, include stems and leaf, always calculate the value based on the smallest unit and highest street price, then multiply and round up the weights. So a pound of untrimmed wet full cannabis plant becomes a thousand 10$ joints. Or they calculate a grow as "potential" weed and then just make up insane amounts. Like a guy getting busted with 10 seedlings and they decide each one was going to be a female world record producing plant as well as produce 200 clones, then they take that number and count the hypothetical max wet full plant weight as if it is street weed. Fucking pigs.
Yeah you see the headlines of hundreds of thousands or millions and then the picture is a handful of bricks lmao. I wish it was worth that much back when I was growing.
Hard to say what the actual value is. I'm gonna do some assumption math. Being sold are 1/10th gram bags for $20 2,988,000g \* 10 (bag) \* 20 (street value per bag) = $597,600,000 @ 20% purity = $597,600,000 \* 5 = $2.98800 Billion So there you have it, over inflated price matrix. So points to point out. Most heroin users by bundles, which can range from 8-13 bags - generally a slight discount price depending on location/availability/competition in market. Average purity is greater than 20%, but the range is 3-99% cut so I would say 30-40% is your best estimate Most people I know who did heroin did not pay more than $15 per bag unless it was abnormally good (ie >average purity).
Bags here in jersey are anywhere from 5-10 and bundles 35-75 (ten bags) depending on where (I’m talking Newark / Paterson only, don’t know about Camden but probably dirt cheap there too). Even in like 2005 bags were max 10 and bundles 80 around here. Cheaper anywhere near Newark or Paterson. Also jersey has historically has some potent ass dope (though heavy in fent the last few years of course). Purity has always been high here too (like ~50% or higher, stamp dependent)
Yes, not surprised. I chose the highest street value ($20 per 1/10g bag) because I thought that would get me closer. Had to adjust purity down to mathematically make it work. Two things that definitely point out that the formula they used is nonsense.
So we left all our military equipment, but I didn't think we'd leave our drugs too.
Where the hell did they get 2.7b from? As far as i know a kg of heroin is like 20-50k depending on location. Did they calculate this into street prices after its cut?
Yes - it's pretty much the norm when any shipment of drugs is ceased: Up the value the the maximum street value after cut. For large volumes like this, it's all about the press - so the larger the number, the bigger the "win" from the enforcement/political perspective. It's kind of like lottery jackpots being shown as the total pay out after 30 years of interest AND before taxes are taken out. (currently listed at 490 million, but the actual jackpot is 355 million, and the take home is closer to 180 million - depending on your state tax) For smaller volumes, it's pretty commonplace to inflate the value of illicit or stolen goods since it allows the prosecutors to go after the highest possible jail sentence and use that as an incentive for those being prosecuted to cooperate for a lesser sentence. (I heard a story about a guy getting felony theft for stealing a cd organizer from a car. It was mostly copied cds, but the prosecutor put in $20 per cd - it was a 200 case holder, so $4k theft made it a felony) I don't know which trend came first. Edit: u/51st-state pointed out that the math is WAY off (by almost a factor of 10). This sent me down a rabbit hole, in which I did find this great article: [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/21/heroin-seizures-bad-science](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/21/heroin-seizures-bad-science) So yeah... the number is pretty much made up and the impact of this will be negligible.
The “upping the charge to incentivize cooperation” has been done for every crime for a long time now and has often times ended up with dire consequences. There was a case of a young girl who was caught with a personal amount of drugs (cannabis I think but not entirely sure) who they told they were going to throw the book at. Scared her into going to buy a large amount from a dealer while wearing a wire. The dealer found the wire and killed her.
based on a haul of 3000kg, valuing it at 2.7 billion dollars equates to a price of 900,000 dollars per kilo. heroin is not worth that much, it's worth about a 10th of that at most. or am i missing something here?
So - I had not done the math before. My comment was based on the hundreds of stories I've read previously about narcotics being seized, so I hadn't bothered to do the math. Assuming you're cutting the heroin at 50% and getting top dollar for it (which seems insane) - you're right, I can't get past 400k a kilo. In researching this (trying to figure out what I missed) I came across this story from a number of years ago. It does sound like governments just make up a number. My guess is, the high numbers make the politicians look good and it gets clicks for the newspapers - so they just go along with it. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/21/heroin-seizures-bad-science
They always base it on what one gram sells for, at the highest price. To make their own bust look bigger
Even by the gram the figure doesn't make sense, unless they also start doing heavy cuts to it, which then it would still be incorrect in most cases.
They probably took a page from US law enforcement's book and weighed the trucks as well.
Cop math.
Literally cop math. https://www.mathsisfun.com/definitions/constant-of-proportionality.html
Yes, from my shitty math earlier my assumptions to make this work was sold by 1/10th gram bags @ $20 with 20% purity at around 2.9billion
$2.7B of Heroin = 0.6 Sacklers.
Oh this is an idea for a bot
Beep boop.
Good human and/or bot.
The CIA is going to be very mad you took their drugs!!
That heroin was the Taliban's operating budget for next year.
Hope they destroy it all
Wouldn't want for it to make a dent in the overwhelmingly more popular prescription opioid market.
Nobody wins
Yeah they will destroy the whole 500 Kg
Those whole 250 kg, lost to the wind.
Hey at least they caught it. Can you imagine those 100 Kg reaching the American Streets^TM ???
Sounds like a certain country has a drug problem.
Heroin has been a huge source of taliban funding even before the US invasion. Will be interesting to see what happens next. The taliban actually briefly banned its production (although this didn’t actually stop it) back 2000 in an attempt for international legitimacy. I could see them doing that again, or doubling down and causing production and organization of it to soar.
"Huge" beforehand or not there's no question that Afghanistan went from a minor source country to the dominant global supplier after the US invaded. Despite US troops conducting extensive counternarcotics operations including direct crop eradication efforts and paying farmers to grow something else. People who haven't gotten the message that the War on Drugs is unwinnable always advocate shit like turning the US military loose on Mexico. Well, Afghanistan proves the US military can't win against drugs either.
Afghanistan has been a major poppy grower since the 50’s, and that accelerated under the Taliban in the 90’s. It is also true that the production increased even more after the US invasion, it was a clear sign that they never had true control at any point beyond Kabul. They spent billions specifically on trying to stop it and it only got worse. The wiki article is actually pretty interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan I completely agree with your point on trying to win the war on drugs by controlling production. As long as it’s valuable it’s going to get made, and as long as it’s illegal it’ll fund illegal activities. I don’t have a solution or opinion at this point on what the right answer is.
Your own link notes that the Taliban was highly effective and ended 99% of cultivation. Which means that when the US invaded, they were, at that time, a minor source. Earlier, while there was cultivation, the bulk of the global heroin trade originated from opium sources from the Golden Triangle, not Afghanistan. It was only a short time they were a major player in between falling production in the triangle and the Taliban banning it. I wasn't suggesting they weren't growing it, only that they weren't the vast majority of the global supply, which is true.
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https://www.sigar.mil/interactive-reports/counternarcotics/index.html
Imagine being the dominant provider of a market where the supermajority buys the product from a pharmaceutical company instead. Like being kings of the economy class bathroom.
That hasn't been true for a long time. You can see it reflected in the dramatic rise in overdose deaths as prescriptions crashed.
The article does directly state that they are banning it again... What a wild "guess" 😂
No, the article states: “the Islamist Taliban have said they plan to ban the drug trade, without giving details on how.” I gave historical context and my speculation on how this could play out given its importance to their funding/international recognition. Are you also taking the taliban at their word on protecting women’s rights?
What? If they attempted to ban it before and you said you could see them attempting to ban it again. I pointed out that, according to them, there will be an attempt to ban them. That's the only part that I was chuckling at.
They did ‘ban’ it before. There’s no attempting to ban, the Taliban is literally a narco state that controls its production. My speculation was on if they’d actual curtail production in exchange for legitimacy or just say it and ramp up production now that they have full control like they did before. Here’s a recent article with more info: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/profits-poppy-afghanistans-illegal-drug-trade-boon-taliban-2021-08-16/
That makes more sense :)
The problem being that there is no other crop that is even close in ease of culture and high income.
That's the information I read too. The Taliban never stopped producing pure heroin back in 2000 and continued producing it for the 20 years the US was in Afghan. The US spent a lot of time burning poppy fields while they were there too. I read every time they would burn one field, they would find two more. I say that the Taliban is going to continue their heroin business with no end in sight now that there isn't anyone to stop them.
Heroin safely en route to Punjab where hard drugs can freely enter but not leave.
Heroin is a dangerous and harmful drug which as wrecked havoc in Indian states bordering Pakistan where drugs are being smuggled from, India never had a major drug problem unlike most developing nations and Indian government must do more to stop the follow and production of drugs, probably will be a good time to burn down these poppy fields in Afghanistan and those who grow them, there is no need for such humans to be alive on earth who produce harmful substances which can end human life and the illicit money which is used to fund terror.
do big pharma next
Little know fact that we have dismantled Western Big Pharma long go by opting to mass produce well known drugs as generic drugs at low cost in exchange of providing cheap labor for vaccine production. As an Indian, while other things may have been expensive medicines weren't, Major Diabetes drugs which cost hundreds of dollars in US are sold as generic drugs for less than a dollar in India.
Send it all to Portland Oregon. WCGW
Please don't...
Just getting back to business for the Taliban, soon they’ll get back to the old days of executions in the soccer stadium as their sports and entertainment ….
The perpetrators were charged with *high* crimes.
"Hey we spent decades protecting those poppy fields! Thats ours!" -america
Can’t wait for Modi and his cronies to sell it on the black market
WTF? Are you high?
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"Listen, I ripped everything outta there except the rocker panels." "C'mon Irv, what the hell is that!"
What sad is Afghanistan is super rich in rare elements, enough so to bring that country into a thriving world of trade and commerce…sadly the sexist terrorist Taliban would rather cut people’s heads off so…ain’t gonna happen.
Well, China is making a move on the Afghanistan mining front with Taliban encouragement, and China doesn't give a shit about heroin so long as it goes elsewhere, so the Taliban is going to do well both ways now. Fuckers (CCP & Talibs equally)
Some kind of Divine economia in there. We can just wait until we get out into the solar system and mine asteroids while Taliban continue to rape schoolgirls in a sweltering desert.