Meanwhile, In The World Of Heroin…
Want any more proof that Afghanistan is lost? No? Well too bad because the opium poppy production is going gangbusters. Literally record crops.
I talk more about this craziness here.
UPDATE:
From the the comments section…
The crop could and should be bought at the grower level. The farmers in Afghanistan will make maybe $ 2.5-3 billion for their crop selling to gangsters and terrorists. We could easily buy it from the farmers at a competitive premium and divert it to the poorest countries in the world that are are under-served in pain medication today.A European drug policy/human rights group, the Senlis Council, that had offices in Kabul, proposed this in the spring. In September the U.S. drug warriors had the Afghans kick Senlis Council out of the country.
The Senlis Council’s website bears this out, as they describe the ins and outs of Opium Licensing.
I think it’s a good idea, and could have the potential to help save Afghanistan from the Taliban…again. And I don’t think that telling the American people that we’re buying these crops in order to make medicine would be a hard sell.
And just in case you think this is all nonsense, Turkey does something similar and it’s tolerated by the US…
The Turkish experience has several parallels to the present situation in Afghanistan as in the 1960s Turkey was one of the world’s main illegal opium producing countries. Faced with significant drug consumption problems, the US demanded complete eradication, disregarding Turkey’s domestic political situation. Emphasising the political weight of the 70,000 poppy farming families, Turkish Prime Minister Demirel deemed that “eradication would create a clash between the government forces and the people, and would make the problem worse, since eradication would create public support for plantings� (April 1970). Years of intense negotiations ultimately resulted in Turkey successfully switching to poppy licensing. The United States continues to support the Turkish poppy industry through a bilateral preferential trade agreement known as the 80/20 rule.
It sounds like a common sense idea.
What do you think?
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You can’t fault the people of Afghanistan for wanting to make money. After invading Afghanistan the U.S. government has seemed to offer no better alternative for the Afghani people.
My personal feeling is that it’s more a problem that the economy of the United States benefits greatly from the creation and sale of weaponry.
The crop could and should be bought at the grower level. The farmers in Afghanistan will make maybe $ 2.5-3 billion for their crop selling to gangsters and terrorists. We could easily buy it from the farmers at a competitive premium and divert it to the poorest countries in the world that are are under-served in pain medication today.
A European drug policy/human rights group, the Senlis Council, that had offices in Kabul, proposed this in the spring. In September the U.S. drug warriors had the Afghans kick Senlis Council out of the country.
But there is a lot more to the national security disaster caused by the war on drugs. From al Qaida’s silent jihad, (Sen. John Kerry spoke to this issue as the World Trade Center still smoldered in September 2001: “That’s part of their revenge on the world,” Kerry said. “Get as many people drugged out and screwed up as you can.”), to the Justice Department assertions that the heroin black markets promise to bring together the Afghan producers with the Colombian gangster who control U.S. distribution. As NYU Professor Barnett Rubin told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September, “Our drug policy grants huge subsidies to our enemies”.
I have written extensively on the fact that the growth of stateless terrorist armies in the world has happened concurrently with the growth of the global black market for drugs. A black market that the U.N. estimates is worth $ 322 billion annually. $ 144 for the U.S. market which is why we can never hope to control our borders. the drug market is so lucrative that entire industries have grown up dedicated to subverting our best border security efforts. SEE: Afghanistan Opium Crop Sets Record Bush failure
The drug war is the greatest national security threat that America faces today.
Our borders would be secure if the business interests in this country wanted them to be.
Access to cheap, exploitable labor is the #1 priority for big businesses and that makes it the #1 priority for the politicians that are in their pockets.
Since when has the war on drugs had anything to do with common sense?
Ending the war on drugs is probably one of the top three things that would truly help America. Ironically, legalization and taxation of currently illegal drugs would probably pay for much of the other two: health care and energy independence.
Not to mention the truly immense savings at all levels of law enforcement from not having to prosecute all these drug cases. Fewer people in prison for drugs might work out to a larger number of intact families, which couldn’t possibly hurt anything.
The Worst President Ever
There are now clear comparsions and clear connections between George W. Bush and another President Ronald Reagan. who solved two problems with Cocaine.
You remember, Under Ronald Reagan, during the 1980s, drug policy became an important part of the way the U.S. dealt with two important political problems. First, Reagan needed a way to finance the counter-revolutionary war that the U.S. was waging against Nicaragua. While everyone knew that the U.S. was running this war, the government couldn’t admit it for political, legal and diplomatic reasons. So it had to be officially secret and officially unfunded. Second, Reagan needed a way to justify his program for dealing with the crisis in the ghettos. In those Reagan years, the economy passed through a hard period of recession and an expansion of “rustbelt� shutdowns. Cuts in government spending and other cutbacks, on top of the huge job loss, created levels of misery that hadn’t been seen in 50 years. Such misery created instability and the danger of resistance.
Reagan’s people, particularly the forces around Vice President George Bush and the CIA, solved the first problem by taking the counter-revolutionary forces in Nicaragua (the contras) and directing them toward the illegal drug business. The CIA essentially hired the private airlines of drug traffickers in the Caribbean basin to secretly transport guns and supplies for the contras. In exchange, the drug operations of these traffickers and their contra allies were allowed to fly into the U.S. unopposed–including onto major U.S. airports and military bases. Funds from major drug rings in L.A. and Miami flowed to the contras.
The CIA had (predictably) denied any role in the cocaine trade. And the system’s mainstream media act like it is “paranoia� to believe that the government might specifically target Black communities with cheap cocaine.�
Fast Forward 2006 – It appears that Herion will be coming to America’s Urban areas real soon via The Worst President Ever policies.
Hello? Every where we go militarily we increase the drug supply it seems. Just an excuse to continue “The War On Drugs.”