(2 Feb 2015) ++CLIENTS PLEASE NOTE WE HAVE NOT IDENTIFIED EXACT LOCATIONS DUE TO SECURITY CONCERNS OF LOCAL RESIDENTS++
Rural farmers in the mountains of the southern Mexican state of Guerrero are feeding a growing heroin addiction in the United States all the while, admitting they were "ashamed to grow the drug."
According to the DEA's (Drugs Enforcement Agency) 2014 National Drug Threat Assessment, Mexico produces nearly half of the heroin found in the US, up from 39 percent in 2008.
The multibillion-dollar Mexican opium trade starts with the red and purple blossoms with fat, opium-filled bulbs, that blanket the remote creek sides and gorges of the Filo Mayor mountains in Guerrero.
Although poppy farmers say they don't like it, they don't have any other options to make money.
One farmer says that while the government says there is support so people don't have to grow drugs, none of it reaches his remote mountain community.
"We're ashamed to grow the drug," he said, not wanting to give his name fearing it could draw attention from government drug eradicators or vengeful traffickers.
"It's the only source of work that gives us a little bit of income, but the government won't let us (grow it)," he added.
Humberto Nava Reyna, the head of the Supreme Council of the Towns of the Filo Mayor, a group that promotes development projects in the mountains, says that the farmers only grow poppies in the absence of lawful work.
Mexican government seizures of opium and eradication of poppy plantations have skyrocketed in recent years.
While poppy growing can be lucrative for the farmers they can lose a season's work in a few minutes to the government helicopters that spray powerful herbicides on any fields they find.
Many farmers say they would like to give up poppy cultivation and plant legitimate crops, in part because of the bloodshed the trade has brought.
"We are poor people, we don't have a way out and sometimes we just have to do what we can, and do our best in whatever job we can do, because what else can we do to support ourselves," said one farmer.
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