Afghan Opium Cultivation Expected to Rise After Record Year

Afghanistan's 2007 opium poppy cultivation could expand again after last year's record crop, the U.N. drug agency said Monday, underlining the weakness of an international-backed drive against the country's booming narcotics trade.

The world body's Office on Drugs and Crime predicted an increase in a string of provinces, including southern Helmand — Afghanistan's largest poppy-growing region and an area wracked by growing Taliban attacks.

In a report released Monday, the office said a recent U.N. survey found growing evidence that the drug trade flourished in regions with poor security.

"This winter survey suggests that opium cultivation in Afghanistan in 2007 may not be lower than the record harvest of 165,000 hectares in 2006," UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa wrote in the report's preface.

Last year, opium cultivation rose an alarming 59 percent, deepening fears that Afghanistan is rapidly becoming a narco-state. Officials say Taliban militants protect southern farmers and tap drug profits to fuel their insurgency.

The U.N. said that poppy cultivation occurred in 100 percent of villages it visited in Helmand province; 93 percent of villages were growing opium poppies in neighboring Kandahar, the Taliban's former stronghold. The U.N. report did not detail how many villages were visited.

It also predicted a sharp increase in cultivation in Nangarhar — touted in recent years as an example of the success of efforts to persuade farmers to grow licit crops — as well as in Kunar and Uruzgan provinces.

Our response to this will be typically ham-handed and retarded. Because we cannot simply wisely declare defeat in the Insane, Racist War on (Some) Drugs, we will instead bomb and fumigate these poppy fields, destroying the lives of the farmers and their communities as well as pushing them into the arms of the Taliban and making our mission in Afghanistan more difficult & ensuring more Americans will die and the endless war there will continue.

A pragmatic, reasonable approach would be for the US to simply purchase the entirety of Afghanistan's opium crop at market prices & use it in the production of medical opiates while at the same time providing aid & instruction to these poor farmers on how to grow other crops. Of course, no other crops will have near the profit potential, due to the fact that opiates are illegal due to the Insane, Racist War on (Some) Drugs. Oh, look, there's the Insane, Racist War on (Some) Drugs at the bottom of another geopolitical problem. Who'da thunk it?

I'm not sure where this product is ending up. Mexico, for decades, and Columbia more recently have been producing heroin to for the U.S. market. I haven't read anything about a big surge of Western Asian heroin coming into the U.S. In fact the last story I read on narcotics claimed that abuse of pharmaceutical drugs was beginning to surpass abuse of raw narcotics in the U.S. However, if this stuff is cheap enough and plentiful it will end up on the street here.

I know as the Vietnam War was winding down the U.S. military began urinalysis of returning troops to identify and treat heroin users. The study I read said 90 percent of the affected personnel responded to treatment and became drug free while 10 percent stayed addicted. This corresponds with the general population.

For at least 60 years, the general consensus of the medical, therapeutic and treatment community has supported the Disease Concept of drug addiction and alcoholism. This thesis states that about 10 percent of people are born with a genetic predisposition to chemical dependency which manifests itself when the individual begins ingesting drugs or alcohol. Chemical dependency, if untreated, is a terminal disease with a range of physical and psychological symptoms and progressive stages that end in death.

Most of the opium from Afghanistan supplies the illegal
trade in most of Europe, so in some sense it's barely our
problem, except inasmuch as it poisons our relationship with
Europe (not much more harm that can be done there, though :-).

It's about a 2.3 billion dollar market. The cheapest and
most radical solution is to simply offer the farmers a better
price than they are getting now, and to buy it all up. 2.3
billion dollars a year is a pittance, compared to what we
are spending now.

Once you have all that opium, I'd use it to undercut the
American heroin market. Imagine what would happen to US
organized crime if you were to sell pure, clean heroin
for a third or quarter the price of what the gangs are
selling it for. It would defund that segment of the crime
organizations, reduce the harm to addicts, and reduce the
recruitment of new heroin addicts (they call them pushers
for a reason).

And if the same people that provide your heroin also
provide your health care, you have an opportunity to provide
rehabilitation and treatment if the addict wants it. No
addict can be forced to abstain if they don't want to.

No chance of this happening with heroin, though. It's not
Puritan or punitive enough for most people.

Around 1970 the Nixon Administration was able to dry up opium production in Turkey through a combination of incentives.

The longterm solution in Afghanistan might be for the U.S. to find an alternative, legitimate crop and pay an artificially high price for it.

The UK is dispensing heroin again to some addicts in place of methadone. I can't see that happening here anytime soon.

Nixon's pragmatism in 1970 and 1971 is admirable and effective.
Unfortunately, the increased prices caused by
the scarcity attracted other players. The Golden Triangle of southeast
Asia was more than happy to make up the difference. I'd like to see the
market itself used to destroy the heroin trade.

Interdiction and prohibition has proven to be very profitable for
organized crime, the prison industry and law enforcement, so I
suspect these interests will prevent any approach to the
problem that they do not find lucrative.

We'll see how it goes in England with the reintroduction of heroin prescription,
and I agree, it won't be happening here very soon.

Thanks for all the information. I agree that the War on Drugs (WOD) hasn't had a lot of successes. I believe that education, at the kindergarten and grade-school level, and treatment--be it 28-day rehab, Narcotics Anonymous or methadone--is far more effective than interdiction. Nixon's original formula was that for each WOD dollar spent 75 cents would go to education/treatment and 25 cents to interdiction/enforcement. Today that funding formula is reversed.

Eighty-five percent of prison inmates are addicts, alcoholics or substance abusers. The public not only bears the costs of this population's property and violent crimes but then has to pay the costs their of incarceration. There has to be a cheaper more efficient way to deal with this. Eventually, out of desperation, the solutions you support, which are libertarian in nature, will probably be tested.

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