"Opium in Afghanistan - Eradicate or Subsidize?" interesting article

[Bill]

An intelligent article - it's intelligence means this will never be tried?

Why be smart when you get more political benefit by going to war?

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"As opium harvests in Afghanistan have steadily increased, some politicians and think tanks - mostly in Britain - have raised a trenchant question: Rather than trying to eradicate Afghanistan's poppies, why not buy them and make morphine?

Given that the World Health Organization estimates that more than 6.2 million of the world's poor are dying of cancer, AIDS, burns and wounds without adequate pain relief, the argument goes, wouldn't it make sense?

Most prominent among these proposals is an analysis by the Senlis Council, a drug-policy research group with offices in London, Brussels and Kabul. The council argues that the United States and Britain waste more than $800 million a year, as well as soldiers' lives, trying futilely to eradicate poppies.

Instead, it calculated two years ago, Afghanistan's whole crop could be purchased for about $600 million - the "farm gate" price, not the street value of the heroin into which it is refined, which is over $50 billion. (The "farm gate" estimate has gone up as the crop has increased, and may be $1 billion now.)

Whatever the price, "enforcement will not work," said Romesh Bhattacharji, a former narcotics commissioner of India who has investigated the Afghan situation for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. "The Afghan farmer will not switch to alternative crops as long as there is a market for his opium.""

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/14/asia/poppies.php

Naw - it's way better to let al qaeda grow opium and sell heroin - gotta keep the fear going at all costs.

[radioguy]

You're right Bill, it is way too logical an approach to ever be taken seriously.

[Cat slave]

I dont know why we dont spray the fields with Roundup. Problem solved.

[LadyMod at scam.com]

An intelligent article - it's intelligence means this will never be tried?

Why be smart when you get more political benefit by going to war?

---

"As opium harvests in Afghanistan have steadily increased, some politicians and think tanks - mostly in Britain - have raised a trenchant question: Rather than trying to eradicate Afghanistan's poppies, why not buy them and make morphine?

Given that the World Health Organization estimates that more than 6.2 million of the world's poor are dying of cancer, AIDS, burns and wounds without adequate pain relief, the argument goes, wouldn't it make sense?

Most prominent among these proposals is an analysis by the Senlis Council, a drug-policy research group with offices in London, Brussels and Kabul. The council argues that the United States and Britain waste more than $800 million a year, as well as soldiers' lives, trying futilely to eradicate poppies.

Instead, it calculated two years ago, Afghanistan's whole crop could be purchased for about $600 million - the "farm gate" price, not the street value of the heroin into which it is refined, which is over $50 billion. (The "farm gate" estimate has gone up as the crop has increased, and may be $1 billion now.)

Whatever the price, "enforcement will not work," said Romesh Bhattacharji, a former narcotics commissioner of India who has investigated the Afghan situation for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. "The Afghan farmer will not switch to alternative crops as long as there is a market for his opium.""

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/14/asia/poppies.php

Naw - it's way better to let al qaeda grow opium and sell heroin - gotta keep the fear going at all costs.

On Paul Harvey today he said something about they were having to curtail some of the harvesting to build clinics or hospitals and provide financial help because there are so many who are poor and addicted to Opium. It was somewhat amusing to think about.

www.paulharvey.com


Lady Mod

[Moby]

Do you have any idea how much Halliburton would lose if the war in Afghanistan ends? These thoughts are blasphemes.

[Cat slave]

Spray Roundup.....the kind that lasts for months!

[Bill]

Spray Roundup.....the kind that lasts for months!

Starve 'em out!

Monsanto is gonna love the idea.

[UserName]

Spray Roundup.....the kind that lasts for months!

If you destroy the only cash crop many of these people have you will effectively starve a very large percentage of the rural Afghan population. Starvation takes a very long time and is quite disturbing to see those pictures of children with distended stomachs, body sores, and flies eating them while they still breath.
Why not just murder the bastards outright with all the illegal munitions we need to get rid of like napalm and white phosphorus bombs and seed their fields with all those millions of land mines we need to dispose of? Seems like a win-win situation the reicht-wing reactionaries would be extremely happy with.

[disrupter]

My thought is everything, perhaps short of Methamphetamine should be legalized.

Alcohol prohibition coincided with the great depression. Coincidence? perhaps, but perhaps not. Certainly it gave rise to organized crime such as Al Capone. It created criminals where there had been law abiding businesses & jobs & taxpaying.

Why not allow adults to choose what they can & can not put in their bodies as long as there is no tangible harm to others.

Silly me. What do i think i am? a Libertarian?
I forgot, we are an anachronistic society with retribution for violation of superstitions.

We certainly wouldn't want to co-opt all this enterprise & energy into the legal economy would we? God knows, that might be intelligent.

Better to have crimes, criminality & overloaded prisons rather than jobs & taxpaying legal businesses & safer, regulated narcotics.

Oops i forgot, only the 'legal' drug companies have the right to produce societies narcotics such as oxycontin. Gosh this isn't a case of pure deception of society is it? Cornering the market for established drug dealers who have already twisted FDA findings?

Hmm, what ever happened to all those LIES about a 'free market'.
Sounds like the morality Nanny state is in charge.

Forked tongued Republicans are fascists NOT believers in a REAL free market.
Laws are just lube for insider criminals, not for equitably dispensing justice.

[Cat slave]

If you destroy the only cash crop many of these people have you will effectively starve a very large percentage of the rural Afghan population. Starvation takes a very long time and is quite disturbing to see those pictures of children with distended stomachs, body sores, and flies eating them while they still breath.
Why not just murder the bastards outright with all the illegal munitions we need to get rid of like napalm and white phosphorus bombs and seed their fields with all those millions of land mines we need to dispose of? Seems like a win-win situation the reicht-wing reactionaries would be extremely happy with.

So then what is the alternative? So many are screaming about the poppy
fields so do away with the poppy fields. If not things will continue as is.
A buy out? How many countries can we buy off? We pay protection money
to N. Korea....try to "win" hearts and minds" with boundless amounts of foreign
aid and I guess now weve got to buy all the poppies to save....lets see now,
who are we saving this time?