Meet the Journalist: Peter Andrey Smith

Pulitzer Center grantee Peter Andrey Smith went to Tasmania to see first-hand how farmers on the island state became the dominant suppliers of the world’s legal narcotics. Tasmania, which lies off the southern coast of Australia, is now home to some of the world’s most productive, highest-yielding fields of opium poppies that are custom tailored for pharmaceutical manufacturers in the U.S. Here, Smith explains how the poppy crop buoyed the rural economy and provided the raw materials for prescription painkillers. This, in turn, laid the groundwork for a drug crisis that has killed more than half a million and left many guessing at what the future holds for Tasmanian-grown poppies.