Despite a $7.5 billion effort on behalf of the United States to stop Afghanistan’s heroin market, a recent US Report indicates that the Islamic nation has risen above American invasions in the name of the war on drugs and increased their opium farm lands by nearly 40 percent.

According to a report financed by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Afghani opium production experienced an increase in 2013, with nearly 806-square-miles of opium poppies sowed throughout the country -- a third more than the year before.

"Poppy is like a virus that is already embedded in a sick body," A****a Mittal, acting country director for the UN Organization of Drugs and Crime, told the Associated Press. "It is going to impact the whole economy of this country. We do believe that in the absence of the growth of the licit economy, the illicit economy will take over."

It is expected that this year’s harvest will surpass previous record-breaking yields, which were responsible last year for generating nearly $3 billion for Afghanistan’s economy -- a staggering 15 percent of the their gross national product.

The United States military has been on a seek and destroy mission in Afghanistan to shut down the country’s opium production, which has equated nothing but failure as troops prepare to evacuate later this year. Overall, the operation has been no match for the government corruption that seems to have always been several steps ahead of military forces, says Mittal.

While Helmand Governor Mohammad Naeem blames the increase in opium production on the Taliban, UN officials argue that it is corruption inside the government that has enabled the flood.

Afghanistan opium production is responsible for supplying three-quarters of the world’s heroin.

Mike Adams writes for stoners and smut enthusiasts in HIGH TIMES, Playboy’s The Smoking Jacket and Hustler Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @adamssoup and on Facebook/mikeadams73.

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