Push to Legalize Poppy Plantations in Mexico Touches on Farmers' Livelihood Gardenia Mendoza - Foxnews.com
go to original July 6, 2016

A young woman harvests opium poppies in Guerrero. (news.jammedup.com)

Opium poppy plantations cover tens of thousands of acres in Mexico, concentrated in nine states along the Pacific coast, including Guerrero, Sinaloa and Nayarit.

It’s the main source of livelihood for thousands upon thousands of families there, opium being at the core of many drugs that are exported to the U.S. – especially heroin, whose consumption is rising to epidemic proportions.

But back in western Mexico, every time the army pulls a petal off of a poppy flower these towns take it as an attack on their farmworker lifestyle, on their safety, and on their fragile pocketbooks. So when earlier this year the governor of Guerrero proposed making it legal for farmers to produce opium poppies for limited purposes, the idea sent waves across the thousands of families.

Mexico supplies at least 50 percent of the heroine sold in the United States.

According to DEA estimates from 2014, that year Mexico’s annual production was 42 metric tons of heroin, with 17,000 hectares growing poppy. And in the last couple of years, cultivation has all but increased.

Two weeks ago, Mexico and the United Nations announced the results of a new study that estimates opium poppies were planted on about 24,800 hectares in Mexico between 2014 and 2015 – findings government officials say they are using to try to help the impoverished farmers who grow the crop.

Just in the state of Guerrero, which yields some 60 percent of the national production, about 1,300 towns are economically depending on it.

But they pay with the high price of violence.

Read the rest at Fox News Latino

Related: 5,000 Mexican Farmers Threatened to Block Belize Border (Amandala)

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