... tie me wallaby down sport

"Tasmania accounts for 50 per cent of all the world's opiate supplies"

"Tasmania accounts for 50 per cent of all the world's legal opiate supplies"

There, that's better and it'll save you getting a stroppy letter from the Afghan Embassy for dissing their multi billion dollar contribution to the world economy.

I'd select an icon, but the little buggers keep running around the screen in circles and I can't catch one.

from their website: "Our mission is to delight our customers..."

...or it didn't happen

So a developed country grows 50% of the world's medicinal opium, a non-indigenous crop (or so I am led to believe) which is having a notable effect on the local fauna

Meanwhile, impoverished, underdeveloped nations where opium poppies *are* indigenous are quota'ed into a small corner of the market and impoverished farmers turn to the black market.

Middle-east: lower labour costs, lower transport costs.

Australia: higher labour costs, higher transport costs.

Smells like protectionism to me.

So, if the wall around these fields can't keep out a few wallabys, how effective can they be at keeping humans from sneaking in, stealing the opium, and selling it?

"Rockliff added that the principal risk associated with animal alkaloid abuse was contamination of the meat, but he noted..."

Contamination? From what? First of all, the active alkoloids (mostly morphine and codeine) in raw opium get broken down very quickly, and they are only in the bloodstream anyways, not sitting in the muscle.

More importantly, WHO CARES! If I could get a legal 20mg of morphine in my lamb kabob lunch here in the States, I'd import all the Tasmanian lamb (do you eat wallabies? ) I could find!

As to the Taliban, the OBVIOUS solution to defeating them besides getting local militia groups to fight them is to cut off their source of funding! In other words, just scrap all of the national drug laws in most western countries and their little insurgency would be over.

Similarly, crime would drop 80% or more as the prices of raw opium, heroin, etc would drop to $5 an ounce. Prices of cocaine, methamphetamine, etc would similarly drop by 90% overnight. Most of the money plowed into the DEA, law enforcement and 50% of the people in prison could go back into the budget, and there would be plenty of money for drug treatment programs.

All in all society would greatly improve. We just need to get rid of the fear-mongering right-wing morons who have no experience with addiction and addiction treatment.

of Poppy heads once, I didn't wander around in circles, We did a bunch of other stuff but no wandering in circles for us.

Isn't it odd that the alkaloids have such a different impact on humans than on wallabies or sheep. I wonder of the wallabies that visit regularly have withdrawal symptoms? It'd be interesting to find out.