I have attached my research essay on the Heroin trail on the page below.
As you may or may not be aware 90% of the world’s heroin comes from Afghanistan, also one of the worlds most corrupt and less economically developed countries in the world. The heroin trail starts in Afghanistan where a struggling farmer grows his opium poppies on the bit of land he has, his country is in turmoil, he’s largely disconnected from the rest of the population, and he has few options to earn a living. There's no irrigation infrastructure, and poppies are the only plants tough enough to withstand the environmental conditions but also the only plant that will earn him eight times as much money as any other crop. The gum which is extracted from the opium poppies is then transformed into heroin which is bough by a “Khan” or in other words the lord of drug trade, he will then buy it and send it off for exportation either by animal, truck or boat through mountainous or oceanic regions over to the Iranian border where the process continues until it reaches Turkey, one of Europe’s main tourist and holiday destinations, with Turkey being so large and busy, it is the perfect location to ship it across European countries and into the UK where eventually it is being sold on the streets of Britain to addicts who are more than likely to have a record of crime and theft. The sheer size and illegal nature of the opium economy means that it permeates and seriously affects Afghanistan's economy, state, society, and politics. The opium economy is a massive source of corruption and gravely demoralizes the reliability of the government and its local representatives. Because of the country’s civil war and low GDP, it has made it increasingly difficult for the poorest in the country to provide for their families as the country’s government are having to find ways in which they can overcome the national conflict as well as economical deficit, so while they are also