3 ms·

A bit “cart before the horse”...no pun intended. From article “But these high, rocky outcroppings are home to a plant that may soon play as central a role in

A bit “cart before the horse”...no pun intended. From article “But these high, rocky outcroppings are home to a plant that may soon play as central a role in the country’s drug economy as the infamous opium poppy. Rehman...searching for Ephedra sinica, a hardy, sage-colored shrub that grows abundantly across central and northern Afghanistan.” In Chinese medicine Ephedra sinica is known as Ma Huang, part of Chinese medicine for 2000 years. “Ma huang is one of the earliest and best known drugs of Chinese traditional medicine, referenced in the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, one of the foundation books of Chinese medicine (about 100 AD). It was and still is used to induce perspiration and to treat the symptoms of bronchial asthma, colds, and influenza.“ https://www.drugs.com/npc/ma-huang.html https://www.drugs.com/npc/ma-huang.html Plants aren’t banned in US or China. Ephedra extracts banned in US since 2006. Unlikely Afghanistan is going to go great guns on this soon. Good discussion from herb mail-order Richters. https://www.richters.com/show.cgi?page=Issues/ephedra.html https://www.richters.com/show.cgi?page=Issues/ephedra.html

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
Not really. BBC reporting from yesterday: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55048147 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55048147 [..] Afghanistan, home to the heroin trade, moves into meth A new report released on Tuesday warns that Afghanistan is becoming a significant global producer of methamphetamine. The country's opium poppy fields are already the source of the majority of the world's heroin, and now this report, by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), warns that crystal meth could eventually become just as big an industry. The boom is the result of a discovery by drug traffickers that a plant commonly found growing wild in parts of Afghanistan, ephedra, can be used to create the key component of meth: ephedrine. "The realisation that you could produce methamphetamine from a wild crop in the mountains has been a fundamental gamechanger," said Dr David Mansfield, an expert on Afghanistan's drug industry and lead author of the report. [..] The team discovered that methamphetamine production was a "two-tiered process", with ephedrine relatively easy to make even for people in poor households, who then sell it on to more specialised "meth cooks". The researchers were able to identify the images of ephedrine labs through the large quantities of waste water and dried ephedra crops left over from the process and dumped outside the buildings. [..]

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

Not really. BBC reporting from yesterday: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55048147 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55048147 [..] Afghanistan, home to the heroin trade, moves into meth A new report released on Tuesday warns that Afghanistan is becoming a significant global producer of methamphetamine. The country's opium poppy fields are already the source of the majority of the world's heroin, and now this report, by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), warns that crystal meth could eventually become just as big an industry. The boom is the result of a discovery by drug traffickers that a plant commonly found growing wild in parts of Afghanistan, ephedra, can be used to create the key component of meth: ephedrine. "The realisation that you could produce methamphetamine from a wild crop in the mountains has been a fundamental gamechanger," said Dr David Mansfield, an expert on Afghanistan's drug industry and lead author of the report. [..] The team discovered that methamphetamine production was a "two-tiered process", with ephedrine relatively easy to make even for people in poor households, who then sell it on to more specialised "meth cooks". The researchers were able to identify the images of ephedrine labs through the large quantities of waste water and dried ephedra crops left over from the process and dumped outside the buildings. [..]