I was playing around with an idea - here are the numbers I came up with:
- it takes one acre to grow 9 kilos of opium in a YEAR
- 9 kilos of opium will make 2 pounds of heroin
- at $150/gram, 2 pounds of heroin is $67,500 - my GUESS is that a pound of heroin, bought as a pound, is about 30-40k
- even at the one pound level, heroin is only around 60-70% pure, so you could have 3 pounds if you cut... figure around 100k, minus expenses (there are quite a few, and some of the chems to make heroin are restricted)
While 100k doesn't sound bad, that is off an ACRE. Granted, poppies aren't watched like weed, but if people on Google earth are seeing your shit, your probably in trouble. Legally, you'd probably do better to get caught with an acre of human body parts than some poppies.
Biggest reason it sucks though is because weed is just a lot more valuable. Figure 6 harvests in a year... 100,000/6... $16,000 a harvest... divided by $1500... 10 pounds every two months -- not going to take an acre to grow 10 pounds.
Now, to be fair, I'm not sure how the 9 kilos / acre / year was derived (I got it from http://opioids.com/jh/) Maybe someone with better equipment, nutes, techniques, ect. could improve dramatically on it, but it still doesn't seem like growing poppies will ever compete with growing weed. I would even go so far as to say, if you were addicted to opiates, and only wanted them for personal, you would still probably do better to grow weed, sell it and buy heroin, in most situations.
Anyway, just figured I'd post this - it actually too a long time to get those numbers. Feel free to chime in if I have anything wrong.
- it takes one acre to grow 9 kilos of opium in a YEAR
- 9 kilos of opium will make 2 pounds of heroin
- at $150/gram, 2 pounds of heroin is $67,500 - my GUESS is that a pound of heroin, bought as a pound, is about 30-40k
- even at the one pound level, heroin is only around 60-70% pure, so you could have 3 pounds if you cut... figure around 100k, minus expenses (there are quite a few, and some of the chems to make heroin are restricted)
While 100k doesn't sound bad, that is off an ACRE. Granted, poppies aren't watched like weed, but if people on Google earth are seeing your shit, your probably in trouble. Legally, you'd probably do better to get caught with an acre of human body parts than some poppies.
Biggest reason it sucks though is because weed is just a lot more valuable. Figure 6 harvests in a year... 100,000/6... $16,000 a harvest... divided by $1500... 10 pounds every two months -- not going to take an acre to grow 10 pounds.
Now, to be fair, I'm not sure how the 9 kilos / acre / year was derived (I got it from http://opioids.com/jh/) Maybe someone with better equipment, nutes, techniques, ect. could improve dramatically on it, but it still doesn't seem like growing poppies will ever compete with growing weed. I would even go so far as to say, if you were addicted to opiates, and only wanted them for personal, you would still probably do better to grow weed, sell it and buy heroin, in most situations.
Anyway, just figured I'd post this - it actually too a long time to get those numbers. Feel free to chime in if I have anything wrong.
