That guy was jacked up on so much oxytocin during this interview.

does anybody know if we use actual opium for opiate synthesis like in Oxycontin, Hydrocodone or Morphine?

*british

Adding video to channels (British) - requested by Zifnab.

>> ^rottenseed:
does anybody know if we use actual opium for opiate synthesis like in Oxycontin, Hydrocodone or Morphine?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphine
"the vast majority of morphine is derived from the opium poppy by either the traditional method of gathering latex from the scored unripe pods of the poppy, or processes using poppy straw, the dried pods and stems of the plant"

I read a story that in India even suffering victims of very bad diseases, cancer, etc. can't get palliative/hospice care anywhere because of the concern that people will become addicted. There was one guy with a giant bleeding maggot infested tumor for a head and he got nothing. His imam kicked him out of the mosque because he stunk so bad. Also, they don't allow direct harvest of the sap or whatever because they don't want regular people touching the plant. They let it dry up and just mow it down for processing like hay.

Go drug war.

I hope Obama has the balls to fix this. sorry for my rant.

Wow. A Hitchens post that doesn't annoy me. Anything against the wasteful, counterproductive, unjust, and hypocritical war on drugs gets my upvote!

I wouldn't mind if a quarter of the male population of China were addicted to opium like they were in the early 20th century. Then maybe they would be too stoned to remember that we owe them $321 billion.

The stupid part is that if there was any genuine concern with stopping the flow of heroin out of Afghanistan, the Taliban would still be in place. They had all but stopped the production of poppy. Yet the first season after the Taliban was ousted the production went from 180 tons to nearly 4000 tons.

Read Crossing the Rubicon in it there's a good explanation why the drug war is so important to the world economy. Basically, the drug cartels use big business to launder their money, big business uses the drug money to make major purchases at lower cost to them than if they borrowed the money from banks, and the prison/law industries need the drug users to keep their prisons and court rooms full, so they can keep the public thinking they need more cops and jails.

There's far more money to be made for everyone concerned if the Drug War continues, so don't expect to see it change any time soon.

^ Excellent point.

The Drug War is a scam from the top down.

You know who would scream the most if the Drug war were actually a success?

Bankers.