AUSTRALIA - TASMANIA BEATS WORLD AT OPIUM, WALLABIES GET THE SPOILS

There’s been a fair bit in the news about vast poppy fields in Afghanistan, but if you think most of the world’s opiates come from the Middle East you’re around 10,000kms off the mark. An interesting fact tailor-made for dinner party conversation is that over half of all pharmaceutical-grade alkaloids are derived from crops grown in Tasmania. How do we know this? Because stoned wallabies have started making crop circles.

Last week, reports surfaced of mobs of wallabies eating the poppies, getting munted, and hopping around until weird circles were formed in the poppy stalks. It’s been documented that when people get lost in the wilderness, they invariably start travelling in the direction of their dominant hand, causing them to walk in sweeping circles. Apparently the same thing goes for drug affected marsupials.

Now, we couldn’t rustle up any pictures of said wallabies or crop circles but I’m inclined to believe any and all stories about strange things happening in the Apple Isle because let’s face it, it’s kind of a weird place.

Currently, two corporations control opium production in Tasmania, GSK and Tasmanian Alkaloids. Both companies offer pretty extensive support to farmers, providing cash advances, seeds, harvesting and cartage. The current price for a tonne of reasonable grade morphine crop is just over $1,800 and you get around two times that per hectare. So, if you’re planting a decent size crop of say 200 hectares, you’re looking at a pretty easy $700,000. Minus whatever the wallabies eat.

So, to the list of famous Tasmanians such as Errol Flynn, Peter Sculthorpe, Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, 21 time world champion woodchopper David Foster and mass murderer Martin Bryant, you can now add opium. Nice one.

ROYCE AKERS

Comments

[nevil pinto]

so, ya saying when i take methadone, oxycontin or a morphine im taking aussie gear?

thats a good enough reason to start getting all nationalistic

ausie ausie ausie oi oi oi

[raymi]

that is pretty f'n amusing. dying to see some footage/photos.

[a]

who still talks in hectares? its acres you noob

[julia iglesias]

You can't link to a surfacing report? Was it like the loch ness monster of reports? Was it just rumoured to have surfaced? Did it submerge again before you could link to it?

I call bullshit. And Spain produces more pharmaceutical opium than fucking tasmania.

[tash]

i call bullshit due to the size of tasmania

[Boyd]

i call bullshit due to it being a vice article

[sally]

fanks julia you're WRONG fucking research before you comment.... and here it is HECTARES. get with the metric system you backwards emperial fucks!

GO AUSTRALIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Geokar]

Here clowns, BBC good enough source for you?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8118257.stm

[Tasmaniak]

QUOTE : "I call bullshit due to the size of tasmania

Posted by: tash | 09/07/2009 at 05:11"

HOMOPHOBIC POOF. IT'S NOT THE SIZE BUT WHAT YOU DO WITH IT!!!
Anyway, Tassie's farmland is massive. Ya think the desert has more water/soil/fertilizer?
TAS has 1/3 of the worlds untouched rainforest too, think about it MATE.

PEESHE

[Jake]

Legalizing poppy production in Afghanistan and getting the pharmaceutical company in to maximise it would change alot. In Helmand right now seeing the harvest in flames.

team America