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Opium in sentence

140 examples of Opium in a sentence

Starving farmers, if unassisted, may return to cultivating a very reliable cash crop: the opium poppy, long a staple of the warlord economy.
Deep-seated biases and resentments – China’s so-called century of humiliation following the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century and America’s inability to get out of its own skin when assessing the ideological threat posed by a socialist state like China – sustained a long-simmering distrust that set the stage for the current conflict.
Forcing China to open up to the opium trade formed one of the most disreputable chapters in Britain’s imperial history.
Chinese grow up with the idea – not wholly wrong – that China was deeply humiliated by foreigners for more than a hundred years, especially during the nineteenth-century Opium Wars and the brutal Japanese invasions.
But Karzai’s relationship with his sponsors has begun to sour, in part owing to charges that his government has failed to stop the resurgence of Afghanistan’s huge opium trade.
Underlying the opium trade issue is a security threat of another kind, one overlooked since the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime in 2001, despite the grave risk it poses to Afghanistan’s long-term stability, and that of the region.
The Taliban are now an increasingly spent force, but lack of water reinforced the logic of opium production across its former strongholds in the south.
Irrigation has failed or is inadequate in Helmand, Uruzgan, and Kandahar – three of the top five opium-producing provinces – where indebted farmers are hooked by the economics: opium brings in eight times as much cash as wheat and uses less water.
The inadequate response to pressing questions of natural resource management, whether of water or trees, merely strengthens the hands of opium dealers and malcontents in what is already the most disaffected and sensitive part of Afghanistan – the clear-cut mountain slopes where intelligence officers believe Osama bin Laden is most likely holed up.
Afghanistan’s Opium WarWhen NATO leaders meet for their summit in Riga at the end of this month, there will be a ghost at the feast: Afghanistan’s opium.
Afghanistan is in danger of falling back into the hands of terrorists, insurgents, and criminals, and the multi-billion-dollar opium trade is at the heart of the country’s malaise.
This year’s record harvest of 6,100 tons of opium will generate more than $3 billion in illicit revenue – equivalent to almost half of Afghanistan’s GDP.
Armed convoys transport raw opium around the country unhindered.
The opium fields of wealthy landowners are untouched, because local officials are paid off.
Senior government officials take their cut of opium revenues or bribes in return for keeping quiet.
Neighbors that used to be transit states for drugs are now major consumers, owing to similar dramatic increases in opium and heroin addiction.
In traditional Western European markets, health officials should brace for a rise in the number of deaths from drug overdoses, as this year’s bumper opium crop will lead to higher-purity doses of heroin.
It is time for the Afghan government to name, shame, and sack corrupt officials, arrest major drug traffickers and opium landlords, and seize their assets.
Improving security and the rule of law must include destroying the opium trade.
Allowing opium traffickers to operate with impunity gives them a free hand to raise money to pay for the arms and fighters battling the Afghan army and NATO forces.
NATO troops should be given the green light to help the Afghan army fight opium – destroy the heroin labs, disband the opium bazaars, attack the opium convoys, and bring the big traders to justice.
Forced eradication risks pushing farmers into the hands of extremists, and thus will not lead to the sustainable reduction of opium fields.
Farmers will be weaned off opium over the long term only if they have sustainable livelihoods.
But any solution in Afghanistan depends on eliminating its opium.
While hiding out in the caves of Yenan, Mao became a distributor of opium.
In 2008, according to the US State Department, potential heroin production reached 18 metric tons, up from 13 metric tons in 2006, as production of opium gum rose to 149 metric tons, from 110 metric tons.
In fact, the eradication of poppy crops not only damage local communities and undermines the international community’s goals, but it is also failing: opium production last year was at an all-time high.
As a way to address this dilemma, the Senlis Council is proposing to run scientific pilot projects to research an opium licensing system for Afghanistan, which would be a core component of the economic reconstruction process.
Licensing the opium crop would be a realistic and pragmatic cornerstone of that strategy’s success.
The major terms of reference overshadowing the Sino-British negotiations which led to the 1984 handover agreement were the conditions set down in the 19th century lease through which Britain acquired most of the territory of the colony of Hong Kong (of which, the major portion of the land was actually on mainland China), having gained the initial imperial foothold on Hong Kong island itself through sheer force in two Opium Wars.
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