Clueless in Afghanistan

Despite a lengthy record of futility, the war on drugs will continue to be waged against Afghanistan’s opium growers. Spurred on by the United States, the Afghan government has rejected “for the time being” a sensible and humane plan to legalize the crop and use the harvest to satiate the world’s demand for legal, opium-derived painkillers such as morphine and codeine.

The recommendation, arising from a study by the Senlis Council, a European drug-policy think-tank, is remarkable for its simple logic. Indeed, it is such an obvious course that even the zealots who drive the war on drugs agenda are hard pressed to identify a reasonable argument against it.

Were the plan adopted, Afghanistan would follow the precedent established by other countries and receive a licence from the International Narcotics Control Board to grow opium legally to supply pharmaceutical companies. The result, at current levels of production, would reduce by 50% the severe shortage of pain-control medicine in the Third World, a serious problem according to no less an authority than the World Health Organization. That means large numbers of people who today suffer in agony would live better lives and die with greater dignity.

What is more, the plan would help to normalize the situation in Afghanistan, which has experienced dramatic growth in the opium trade since the defeat of the Taliban in late 2001. The production is the largest and fastest-growing business in Afghanistan; it accounts for $2.7-billion annually in revenue, and represents an estimated 60% of the country’s GDP. By providing a legal outlet for opium products, the Afghan government would end the trend by which the nation is being destabilized by terrorists and warlords, who are now ploughing their criminal drug profits into the recruitment of private armies.

Instead, the international community, led by the United States and Britain, is driving a policy aimed at eradicating the poppy fields that yield opium and subsidizing farmers to grow other crops, largely with funds provided by the United States Agency for International Development. This process has been, according to the study, a costly failure. The proof is in the size of the annual increases in opium production — which has jumped by seven times in just three years.

None of this should come as a surprise. A similar eradication program that the United States has funded for years in Colombia has also been an expensive flop. One is reminded of the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over, all the time expecting a different outcome.