Before the current "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan, we were supposed to have declared war on drugs. I think we are missing an important thing that affects our country in a very negative fashion. I am especially thinking of heroin and those drugs related to the opium poppy production. We were supposed to be helping Afghani farmers come up with an alternative cash crop to opium poppies Instead, the Taliban is doing everything they can to encourage poppy growth and the subsequent opium and heroin production. Some of the money spent in the US on drugs ends up in the hands of organized crime, and much more importantly, some of it ends up in the hands of the Taliban. They use it to finance their terrorist activities in Afghanistan, and it wouldn't surprise me to find out they help support Al Qaida in Iraq. So in essence, US citizens are financing both sides of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. How bizarre. Support our troops on one hand, and help kill them with the other.
I haven't heard anything from any of the candidates on this subject, but probably because its just not a fashionable thing to discuss anymore. They have touched a bit on the medical uses of marijuana, one even admits to inhaling. I don't have any substantive data, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that opiate sales are on the rise. Combating this trend has got to be better for us in the long run than many domestic programs being proposed.
Let's bring home our troops from some of the 170 locations they are currently deployed, and use their talent and strength to stop the flow of illicit drugs into our country. Let's also take a harsher look at the penalties associated with this activity. Do you know what happens to druggies, drug smugglers, and dealers in Muslim countries? Usually the punishment is death. They just don't tolerate it. We need to move in that direction.
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We have a lot of problems here. First of all, neither we nor our puppets in the "legitimate" government of Afghanistan have done a good job of creating an environment where there is safety and legitimate economic opportunity for the farmers, who are largely blameless as far as I can tell -- they just want to be free from thugs with guns and have the ability to feed their families. Growing opium poppies is the best way for them to accomplish those goals.
Secondly, we insist on prohibition as the demand-side solution to drug abuse problems. This drives the market price of the drugs sky-high, thereby creating an economic incentive matrix which funds the thugs with guns, who in turn fund the really bad guys. I'm not suggesting that the Swiss solution (needle parks) is the best alternative, but it's political suicide to even talk about something other than ever-more draconian punishments.
Third, ever-more draconian punishments don't work. Although you are right that other nations have astonishingly harsh punishments, including death, for involvement with drugs, you might also consider that those countries still have significant subcultures of drug abuse. If people are going to sell, buy, and use this stuff even if the authorities will kill them for doing so, it seems pretty evident to me that the marginal gains of a legal policy of deterrence far outweigh the costs associated therewith.
And finally, we've broken our promises to those farmers. We promised them that if they accepted the Karzai government and rejected the Taliban, we'd make sure that they wouldn't lose any money by switching to vegetable and wheat farming. We promised them we'd help them rebuild their country's infrastructure (after a quarter-century of war) and that they would be safer and more prosperous now than at any time in the past. We've failed to deliver so badly that the Taliban looks like a better alternative to them.
Shame on us.
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