Discussion. 1. Do you think Michel would have taken doping if he had been aware of its danger at the beginning of his career?

1. Do you think Michel would have taken doping if he had been aware of its danger at the beginning of his career?

2. What would have happened if he hadn’t undergone detoxification treatment?

3. Do you think he would have become a drug addict if he hadn’t been injured and hadn’t started using cortisone?

4. Would he have begun using pot belge, when he was in a bad mood, had he known it’s so addictive?

5. What would he be doing now if he hadn’t become a drug addict?

6. Do you think he would agree to lead a normal life (though he says “it seems so flat” to him) if he found a girl he could fall in love with and who would agree to marry him?

7. What do you think his wishes and regrets are?

8. What do you think he could recommend to young athletes? (He could recommend (suggest, advise) that they …. He could think it essential (necessary, advisable, important, desirable) that they ….)

9. What are the wishes and regrets of Michel’s parents?

10. What could they recommend to young athletes?

11. What would they have done if they had known what would happen to their son?

 

Vocabulary 1

 

18. Study the use of the following synonyms or near synonyms. Make up sentences or short situations to show how you understand thedifference in their meaning.

1. among, between

among – между, среди (многих)

E.g. Divide it among the three children.

between – между (двумя)

What is the difference between this and that?

Note: When we speak of clear and exact position we always use ‘between’.

E.g. Ecuador lies between Colombia, Peru and the Pacific Ocean.

2. to protect, to defend

to defend – защищать, оборонять (имеются в виду активные действия защиты)

E.g. When the dog attacked the boy he defended himself with a stick.

to protect – защищать, предохранять

E.g. He wore dark glasses to protect his eyes from the sun.

A country must protect its forests against fire.

3. estimate, calculation

estimate – (предварительный) подсчет, оценка

E.g. We had two or three estimates before having the office repaired and accepted the lowest.

calculation – подсчет, вычисление, расчет

E.g. His calculation was quite correct.

There is calculation behind her choice of friends.

to estimate – оценивать, приблизительно подсчитывать

E.g. The press estimated the number of demonstrators as 2,000.

to calculate – подсчитывать, вычислять (точно)

E.g. Have you calculated what a trip to France would cost?

4. to be forced to do smth, to be obliged to do smth

to be forced to do smth – быть вынужденным что-то сделать (под угрозой, по принуждению)

E.g. They threatened him with a knife and he was forced to give them the key.

to be obliged to do smth – быть вынужденным что-то сделать (по закону или моральным побуждениям)

E.g. He had to keep his promise, so he was obliged to go through with it.

5. clean, pure

clean – чистый, незараженный, незапятнанный

E.g. You must keep your house clean.

He has a clean record.

pure – чистый (без примесей)

E.g. It is pure (100%) wool.

6. to administer, to prescribe (a medicine)

to administer (a medicine) – назначить, применять, давать (лекарство)

E.g. The nurse administered the medicine to the sick woman.

to prescribe (a medicine) – назначать, выписывать лекарство

E.g. Don’t take any medicine if the doctor doesn’t prescribe it.

7. to lament, to complain

to complain – жаловаться, подавать жалобу, выражать недовольство

E.g. She complained to the police about her neighbours.

to lament – (горько) жаловаться, сокрушаться

E.g. She lamented the death of her only friend.

8. common, usual

common – обычный, обыкновенный, широко распространенный

E.g. It is a common error.

usual – обычный, обыкновенный, обычно происходящий

E.g. He said all the usual things.

 

Reading for Information

 

19. Read Article 1 quickly and find answers to the following questions.

1. What are the statistics on opium production in Afghanistan?

2. What international agency deals with the drug problem?

3. Why are European countries so concerned about the level of opium production in Afghanistan?

4. What is the ODCCP program concerning Afghan opium production focused on?

5. Why didn’t the financial aid rendered to Afghanistan in 2002 serve its purpose?

6. Why are Afghan farmers unlikely to give up growing poppy and switch over to wheat production?

 

Article 1

A Bumper Crop

 

At a seminar on drugs held recently in Nangarhar province in south-eastern Afghanistan, 55-year-old Khan Zamar, a farmer, put it in a nutshell. “All our life depends on income from poppy, it is the best cash crop. If there are alternatives, we’ll leave poppy. We accept the orders of the government, but there are problems for us.” When asked about this season’s planting he said: “I will grow whatever the people cultivate; if it is poppy, if it is wheat.”

This week, the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (ODCCP) was due to release figures on this year’s harvest. According to statistics issued by Drug Scope, a British charity, output for 2002 was between 1,900 and 2,700 tonnes of opium resin, a huge rise on the 185 tonnes produced during the Taliban regime’s final year in power.

In the future, the poppy problem will be a good indicator of the President’s hold over the country. At the height of their power the Taliban boasted a 94% reduction in output between their July 2000 decree banning poppy cultivation and the 2001 tiny harvest. It won them praise from the West.

With Afghan poppies accounting for around 80% of the supply of heroin in Europe, western leaders consider their reduction a priority. Under an agreement worked out by the G8 (the seven richest industrialized countries, plus Russia), efforts to improve drug control in Afghanistan are being led by Britain. It is working with both the Afghan government, which has set up a National Security Council (NSC), and the ODCCP.

Part of the NSC’s remit is to tackle the production and trafficking of heroin. But mechanisms are not yet in place at provincial level to achieve this. Even if they were, regional leaders, many of whom have benefited from heroin trafficking in the past, are likely to object to any interference.

The ODCCP aims to bring drug control into the mainstream of development assistance, focusing on law reforms, the creation of an effective police force and, most important but most difficult of all, the development of alternative sources of income for Afghanistan’s poppy farmers.

Finding money for all this is a problem. By September 2002, nearly half of the $1.8 billion committed to the reconstruction of Afghanistan for 2002 had been disbursed, and most of that had been used to pay for emergency projects such as resettling refugees, rather than reconstruction. Little was left for long-term programmes.

According to UN officials, there are obvious flaws in the existing schemes. A kilogram of opium is at today’s prices worth around $300 to a farmer, so that with an average harvest of 50kg per hectare, he can expect to bring in around $15,000 per hectare.

The disincentives to growing alternative crops are formidable. Roads and irrigation canals need rebuilding, and Afghanistan’s droughts make the cultivation of crops needing more than minimal water, such as wheat, near-impossible. Wheat is also expensive to transport and to store. Poppies require little water to grow, and the harvested resin can be kept for years before being processed for heroin. Besides, the returns for wheat, at around $60 per hectare, are minuscule compared with poppy. That is the problem that is getting worse: as refugees return to their homes, there are growing pressures on land. So Khan Zaman, still concerned about putting food on the table for his children, may look to see what his neighbours are doing, and join them in planting poppies.

(From ‘The Economist’)

 

 

20. Read Article 2 quickly and find answers to the following questions.

1. In which region is cannabis traditionally grown in Morocco?

2. Is cannabis production spreading to new areas?

3. How much of Morocco’s arable land is given over to cannabis?

4. How much cannabis is harvested in Morocco?

5. In what way does cannabis production threaten the environment?

6. How many people depend on cannabis crop?

7. What fact indicates that cannabis production in Morocco will hardly be abandoned?

8. What income do Moroccan farmers get from cannabis cultivation? How does it compare with the profits of drug trafficking in Europe?

 

Article 2

£7bn Cannabis Crop Strips

Morocco of Trees and Soil

 

Cannabis production is expanding so fast in Morocco that it is causing soil erosion and the destruction of the long established forests, the UN reported yesterday. The illicit cash crop, which supplies most of the resin used by Europeans, is estimated to be worth $12 billion a year to trafficking networks.

As much as a quarter of the agricultural land in the Rif, the mountainous region where the plant is traditionally grown, is given over to cannabis cultivation, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says. Two-thirds of the local population – as many as 800,000 people – depend on the crop. “Through its expansion, cannabis production threatens the environment of the Rif,” says Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UNODC. “It risks corrupting the social and economic structures and compromising any prospects of sustainable development.” The increase was particularly due to the “spectacular expansion of drug consumption” in Europe, he said.

The report reinforces previous alerts about the scale of the Moroccan drug industry. This summer, EU agronomists abandoned a $750,000 programme intended to persuade Moroccan farmers to cultivate avocados rather than cannabis.

The survey, carried out with the cooperation of the Moroccan government, shows 134,000 hectares are given over to growing what is locally known as rif. As much as 47,000 tonnes is harvested. “In the past 20 years cannabis cultivation has spread from the traditional areas in the central Rif, where it has been grown since the 15^th century, to new areas,” the report says.

It often comes “at the expense of forest areas, as well as of better arable and irrigated land, thus contributing to soil erosion and disappearance of legal agriculture.”

As much as 1.5% of Morocco’s arable land is now given over to cannabis. The average family income from it is estimated to be as much as $2,200.

Virtually all the hashish used in Europe comes from Morocco, according to a recent report by the EU monitoring centre on drugs and drug abuse. The price has fallen sharply in the past four years in Britain, possibly as a result of a rapid rise in homegrown marijuana. The gradual softening of laws against cannabis possession does not appear to have had any significant effect so far on demand for Moroccan hashish.

The UNODC report shows that most of the money from illegal drugs sales does not return to the farmers, whose combined income from it is believed to be around $200 million, compared with $10 billion earned in Europe.

“This phenomenon of monoculture is extremely dangerous for the eco-system,” the report concludes, “especially because the farmers are making extensive use of fertilizers and overexploit the soil.

‘Forest areas are destroyed every year to accommodate new cannabis fields, thus accelerating erosion.”

An earlier UNODC report suggested that cannabis is the most widely produced illegal drug in the world. It estimated that 163 million people take it.

(From ‘The Guardian’)

 

Now read the articles carefully, find the following word combinations in the text and learn their meaning. Make it a particular point to use theseword combinations in the further overall discussion of the problem.

Article 1. To cultivate smth, to release figures on smth, a reduction in output of smth, a harvest, to consider smth a priority, to disburse money, a long-term programme, to make smth near-impossible, to be processed into smth.

Article 2. Illicit, a trafficking network, to expand, expansion of smth, (drug) consumption, to reinforce smth, possession (to possess drugs), to have some effect on smth, demand for smth, to contribute to smth.