March 18, 2016
Mexico City -- The governor of one of Mexico's (click here) most violent states is making waves by proposing that impoverished farmers be allowed to grow opium poppies for legal medical use.
Do Mexican Mayors realize their cities are violent because of the drug cartels and their plantations?
Guerrero state is among Mexico's poorest, and many remote mountain communities already grow small plots of poppies, which are bought by drug cartels that have fought violent turf battles throughout the Pacific coast state.
It has become the biggest opium-producing state in Mexico, supplying about half the heroin used in the United States.
Guerrero Gov. Hector Astudillo suggested this week that farmers be allowed to produce opium for legal medical use.
Astudillo, a member of President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, later said his comments were more thinking-out-loud than a concrete proposal.
But they illustrate the government's difficulty in weaning small farmers away from what is often their only alternative to migration. Local farmers often raise corn on their dry mountain plots, but don't grow enough to even meet their own needs. Many keep an acre or so of irrigated poppies to provide an income....
Mexico City -- The governor of one of Mexico's (click here) most violent states is making waves by proposing that impoverished farmers be allowed to grow opium poppies for legal medical use.
Do Mexican Mayors realize their cities are violent because of the drug cartels and their plantations?
Guerrero state is among Mexico's poorest, and many remote mountain communities already grow small plots of poppies, which are bought by drug cartels that have fought violent turf battles throughout the Pacific coast state.
It has become the biggest opium-producing state in Mexico, supplying about half the heroin used in the United States.
Guerrero Gov. Hector Astudillo suggested this week that farmers be allowed to produce opium for legal medical use.
Astudillo, a member of President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, later said his comments were more thinking-out-loud than a concrete proposal.
But they illustrate the government's difficulty in weaning small farmers away from what is often their only alternative to migration. Local farmers often raise corn on their dry mountain plots, but don't grow enough to even meet their own needs. Many keep an acre or so of irrigated poppies to provide an income....
