Don't forget that Gary Webb broke the story about the CIA running the drugs to Rick Ross and other inner city areas, and ended up committing suicide (or according to some being suicided.)
The British and Dutch started it with the opium wars and now America took a page from their book and does it too. This is the real issue behind the war on drugs. They create a black market and then own that market, makes for tons of money that's unaccountable to congress (eg perfect for black budget ops).
Opium production in Afghanistan was almost nil before we invaded, and now Afghan heroin is getting shipped straight to America and business is booming! Similar things happened in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
I hadn't connected the recent popularity of heroin with the decade-ago colonization of Afghanistan. But of course, that's the time it takes to setup mass cultivation, informal supply lines, domestic distribution networks, and finally, social popularity.
Gosh, this shit really does camouflage over human-imperceptible timescales.
The kind of entities that participate think in longer timescales than most, which is a key advantage for plausible deniability. Strategically effective, I'll give em that.
The British and Dutch started it with the opium wars and now America took a page from their book and does it too. This is the real issue behind the war on drugs. They create a black market and then own that market, makes for tons of money that's unaccountable to congress (eg perfect for black budget ops).
Opium production in Afghanistan was almost nil before we invaded, and now Afghan heroin is getting shipped straight to America and business is booming! Similar things happened in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.