Presumably, when a story involves both drugs and terrorism, some kind of fuse blows in the collective Mail brane and the hysteria overpowers them. This time they’ve got the Taleban turning cannabis into heroin.
RAF Harrier jump jets have blown up the world’s biggest drug haul in Afghanistan by dropping three 1,000lb bombs on a 237-ton stash of cannabis.
Officials believe the area – near to the Taliban stronghold of Quetta in Pakistan – was turning dried cannabis leaves into heroin.
The story is illustrated with images of a concerned mother who is helpfully described as a blazing trench of drugs.
Viva.
raygirvan said,
June 13, 2008 at 3:18 am
turning dried cannabis leaves into heroin
They’re not bombing them because they’ve got drugs; they’re bombing them because they’ve discovered the Philosopher’s Stone. Still, bet the observers queued up to stand downwind.
richardaholden said,
June 13, 2008 at 6:25 am
Brilliant nonsense from the Mail, there.
That photo of the woman & children now seems be illustrating a story about breast feeding. Unless she’s breast feeding them heroin, I think the Mail may have made a mistake using it to illustrate that story.
You also have to admire how they’ve got not one but two stories about women having breasts:
Quality stuff.
Gypsum Fantastic said,
June 13, 2008 at 7:24 am
It’s like they’ve got the Twat-O-Tron in as guest editor.
BTW, before the war, the received wisdom was that the Taleban had more or less obliterated the Afghan drug trade. Now we’re told they’re responsible for it, the evil raghead terrorist drug pushers!!
Michael Power said,
June 13, 2008 at 8:09 am
Turning dried cannabis leaves into heroin is good economics not bad science.
Teek said,
June 13, 2008 at 8:34 am
@ Gpysum: not only is the Twat-O-Tron the guest editor, the sub-editor appears to be the Meaningless Units-O-Tron:
“The haul, worth £225million and weighing more than 30 double-decker buses…”
Also, does Guinness know about the bombning campaign…?
“‘This is a new world record in the global war on drugs.’
outeast said,
June 13, 2008 at 9:50 am
They’ve corrected the picture – but the cannabis is still being turned into heroin. Damnned clever chaps those sand-niggers.
martinr said,
June 13, 2008 at 9:55 am
Within the same short article: ‘237-ton stash’, ‘236 tons of hash’, ‘2.5 tons of opium’, ‘5 tons of opium’, ’six trenches’, ‘third of three drug caches’. I think ‘Daily Mail reporter’ has spent the afternoon smoking something. “Oh man that’s like 20 busses .. what did I just say, oh yeah, that’s like thirty double decker busses..wow” . i tried to comment but they must vet comments – probably by checking whether your IP address is within or outside of Buckinghamshire.
Squander Two said,
June 13, 2008 at 10:01 am
One of the captions now mentions “236 tons of hash and 2.5 tons of opium”. So some official probably did mention cannabis and making heroin in the same sentence and confused the poor reporter. Which I doubt was difficult.
I have to wonder about the economics of destroying the drugs with Harriers. Apparently, they doused the remains with petrol afterwards and burned them. Why not just do that in the first place?
Squander Two said,
June 13, 2008 at 10:07 am
Oh, hang on.
“Officials believe the area – near to the Taliban stronghold of Quetta in Pakistan – was turning dried cannabis leaves into heroin.”
It wasn’t people turning the cannabis into heroin — it was the area. Like, some weird geographic phenomenon. Well, that might be possible.
seenoevil said,
June 13, 2008 at 10:51 am
Heh. Saw this yesterday, fantastic.
Perhaps their Science & Tech section will do a follow up story about the actual process involved. Should be of interest to all the home growers out there.
used to be jdc said,
June 13, 2008 at 11:35 am
Brilliant. They are clearly publishing stories without reading them. I love that someone eventually spots that the woman and two kids are not, in fact, a cache of drugs – but still fails to spot that an area is turning cannabis into heroin.
muscleman said,
June 13, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Has anyone else tried to comment on it? I have and it hasn’t passed the moderators. They obviously cannot stand any sort of criticism.
rjmunro said,
June 13, 2008 at 2:08 pm
See also this blog, that finds some more holes in the story, mainly over the values and quantities involved:
http://thelawwestofealingbroadway.blogspot.com/2008/06/jump-jet-heroes-destroy-horror-drugs.html
germslayer said,
June 13, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Perhaps we should do something like this: http://www2.kerrang.com/2008/06/mcr_protest_photos.html every time the mail gets it wrong…
(mind you, don’t fancy being permanantly camped outside there!)
adamlaughlin said,
June 14, 2008 at 8:49 pm
At the end of my adolescence, I have spent the last half of my life learning about everything with the internet, and I can’t believe lately how stupid your UK government thinks its subjects are. THEY THINK YOU ARE SO STUPID! ;_; I live in Canada, and I can tell you that the American media treats the YANKEES with more respect than the people who are barking on about skunk, mould and… alchemy?
Please, Britons, I implore you, tell two friends to tell two friends to tell two friends to not believe anything they watch on tele or print for the next ten years.
Robert Carnegie said,
June 15, 2008 at 3:14 am
It isn’t contradictory (but may not be true) that the Taleban in the old days closed down drug farming, but now uses it to raise funds. In the old days they were funded by the U.S., or maybe armed…
Incidentally, what was or is the IRA position on drugs, really? They too needed funds but could get them as U.S. donations – which -might- dry up if the same group was also in the drugs trade.
chinaphil said,
June 15, 2008 at 3:28 am
Burning cannabis and dispersing it into the air? And we’re meant to believe this is not psyops? Perhaps it’s the new strategy: look Taliban, just chill the fuck out! Take some good deep breaths of nice fresh air, and chill.
D-Notice said,
June 15, 2008 at 10:52 am
Does this mean that Cannabis is a gateway drug to Heroin?
aimaz said,
June 15, 2008 at 9:36 pm
They have confused Columbia and Colombia as well.
I wonder if they mean the spaceship.
NuttyBat said,
June 16, 2008 at 3:43 pm
There’ll probably be a follow-up piece on the dangers of GM plants to explain how cannabis can be turned into heroin.
Does anyone know the volume of 80 tonnes of coccaine? Would it fit into a space shuttle?
heavens said,
June 17, 2008 at 11:52 pm
NuttyBat,
The maximum payload weight for a space shuttle is only about 26 tonnes, so the volume of the cocaine doesn’t matter: it would take at least three space shuttles to carry that weight to low earth orbit.
mikewhit said,
June 19, 2008 at 5:23 pm
I do wish, when the press goes on about “… xxx drugs, worth £yM …” they would go on to say, “… to a junkie. ”
Because it’s not worth that to anyone else.
Robert Carnegie said,
June 21, 2008 at 9:55 pm
There was a Sergio Aragones strip cartoon in a series about cannabis, where the police found the field and burned it, then headed back downwind into town and found the population lying around giggling from the fumes. But this seems quite improbable.
Robert Carnegie said,
June 21, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Morphine is worth a bit to hospitals. A proposal to legalise Afghanistan’s produce and reserve it for clinical use seems to have fallen on stony ground, and probably right.