Posted on 09/20/2006 8:02:55 AM PDT by kellynla
AS if there hadn’t been enough bad news from Afghanistan of late, now the country’s drug dependency is back in the headlines. On Sept. 2, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that the shattered country is now producing 92 percent of the world’s supply of illegal opium, up from 87 percent in 2004. This deplorable new record will not be reversed by more belligerent counternarcotics measures. Instead, America, NATO and the Afghan government must reform a vital but neglected institution: the local police.
In 2004, for the first time in history, farmers in every province of Afghanistan chose to cultivate opium poppies. The American and Afghan governments promised a major poppy eradication campaign. Aid agencies scrambled to create an economic alternative for the thousands of Afghans who depended on poppy farming to survive.
Thus in November 2004, I traveled to Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand Province, the opium heartland of Afghanistan, as the deputy leader of an “alternative livelihoods” project financed by the United States Agency for International Development. Our core team was made up of six Western aid workers, and we hired some 80 Afghan staff members.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Question: Who buys their product?
Question: Who buys their product?
Another question, who are they paying off to stay in business?
Perhaps something of a partnership has developed?
Who's in charge over there anyway?
What other products can the small farmer produce, that enerates the same revenue?
Bill gates and his charity should purchase all the opium they can produce and use it for painkillers as they clean up the third world.
Problem solved. The afghanies are happy, few drugs hit the streets and africans will be relieved. But it will never happen.
Fedgov.org will not allow it and gates charity is just a tax deduction so his oddles of billions will live in name long after he is gone.
Same with Buffett and his billions.
"Who buys their product?"
did you read the article?
"the shattered country is now producing 92 percent of the world’s supply of illegal opium"
I'm not sure the world economy could survive the hit that removing all that tax-free, untraceable, and desperately- needs-to-be-laundered-by-some-lucky-financial-institution cash would entail.
"Question: Who buys their product?"
Pakistan drug wholesalers.
"Bill gates and his charity should purchase all the opium they can produce and use it for painkillers as they clean up the third world."
Something like that. Or a consortium of Western countries.
$2 billion a year. Cheap.
It was rhetorical. IOW, we have a problem with them producing what our citizens are asking for.
Do potatoes grow well in Afghanistan?
you reeeeeely are wasting my time
if you can't come up with any more intelligent questions than you have please don't post to me.
Is the logistics infrastructure in place in Afghanistan, to produce and distribute other agricultural products profitably? Is there a market for other produce? Is there special farm equipment, fertilisers, irrigation, etc., needed by the average Afghani farmer to make it possible for them to turn a profit?
I disagree.
"The morons are out in force on this thread. Imagine their incredulity if we told them that the only way to make opium as unprofitable as other crops would be to legalize it. lol...."
my tagline
None. Illict drugs produce the highest revnue because of their illictness.
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