Exploitation, brutality and misery: how the opium trade shaped the modern world
In his new history, Amitav Ghosh shows how the world’s first international drug cartels were run by the Dutch and British ...
The New Republic on MSN1mon
Amitav Ghosh’s Reckoning With Opium
“Farmers could be evicted if they planted any other crop, and since most poppy growers were ‘tenants at will,’ they were in ...
Scientific American23d
Cultivation of the Poppy and Manufacture of Opium
The climate of these parts of Asia seems peculiarly adapted to the growth of the species of poppy (papaver somniferum), from which opium is obtained ; accumulating in the juice of the plant the ...
The Financial Times11d
El Chapo’s opium heartland bereft as Mexico cartels embrace fentanyl
A sustained collapse in opium paste prices has forced growers in Sinaloa to acknowledge a permanent shift in the market. In the last five years, the price of poppy gum dropped by up to 90 per cent ...
Hosted on MSN5mon
War-wracked Myanmar is now the world's top opium producer, surpassing Afghanistan, says UN agency
The report notes that “opium poppy cultivation in Southeast Asia ... UNODC said the average price paid to opium growers increased by 27% to about $355 per kilogram ($161 per pound ...