The Lost War (Losing the drug war in Afghanistan)

The Washington Post ^ | Sunday, August 19, 2007 | Misha Glenny

[Milton Friedman]

Thirty-six years and hundreds of billions of dollars after President Richard M. Nixon launched the war on drugs, consumers worldwide are taking more narcotics and criminals are making fatter profits than ever before. The syndicates that control narcotics production and distribution reap the profits from an annual turnover of $400 billion to $500 billion. And terrorist organizations such as the Taliban are using this money to expand their operations and buy ever more sophisticated weapons, threatening Western security.

In the past two years, the drug war has become the Taliban's most effective recruiter in Afghanistan. Afghanistan's Muslim extremists have reinvigorated themselves by supporting and taxing the countless peasants who are dependent one way or another on the opium trade, their only reliable source of income. The Taliban is becoming richer and stronger by the day, especially in the east and south of the country. The "War on Drugs" is defeating the "war on terror."

[Milton Friedman]

Somebody once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Time to stop the madness.

[RC2]

Give me a plane and a load of roundup and I’ll get rid of the poppy fields. No brainer here.

[brooklyn dave]

If I were living in a hell hole like Afghanistan I’d grow poppies too. War on drugs is a joke. Need to change our policy.

[rhombus]

Somebody once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Give me a plane and a load of roundup and I’ll get rid of the poppy fields. No brainer here.

You couldn't ask for a better example of what you just posted.

[DoingTheFrenchMistake]

Some of these drugs have been used for thousands of years, in good times and in bad, through political unrest, wars, famine & pestilence what makes you think that our declaration of war on some drugs matters yet alone would be successful?

Markets will be served and as long as demand exist someone will find a way to get the product to the end user, if it is one thing we understand completely it is capitalism.

[rhombus]

If I were living in a hell hole like Afghanistan I’d grow poppies too. War on drugs is a joke. Need to change our policy.

Or live in a hell hole in NYC where you could make more money selling bud than flipping burgers? I agree we need to change our policy.

[bigfootbob]

Meantime the military and hospitals have a shortage of morphine stocks as the sanctioned growers are producing opium at capacity.

[gondramB]

The problem with the drug war is it takes state contol like the Taliban to make it work and nobody in their right minds wants that. Even the Americans who favor Taliban-like control of sex and drugs blanch at the other aspects.

[GoldenPup]

Sounds like Washington has lost the formula for Agent Orange. We could easily wipe out the sources of these drugs in Afganistan and/or Columbia, but then those country’s economies would collapse. What do we do then??

[caltrop]

IMHO, three points should guide our drug policy. First, you can't save someone from himself. Second, there isn't a hair on some ninety year old's head that isn't worth more than all the world's drug addicts put together. Third, only taking the money out of drugs will end the problem.

Taking these points into consideration one possible solution is to allow drug addicts to obtain a card from the local Board of Health which allows them to get their fix at the Board of Health for on premises consumption at a price so low the addict could get the funds necessary by raking a lawn or taking out someone's trash. By adopting this approach the dealers would instantly lose all of their customers and lose their incentive to turn anyone else into an addict.

This wouldn't work for marijuana and in that case I'd propose allowing its sale at $20 a joint, of which something like $19.98 would be tax.

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

I have witnessed how a ferocious drug gang mounted an assault on Sao Paolo, closing the city for three days as citizens cowered at home. I have watched Bedouins shift hundreds of kilos of cocaine across the Egyptian-Israeli border on the backs of camels, and observed how South Africa and West Africa have become an international narcotics distribution hub. The trade in illegal narcotics begets violence, poverty and tragedy.

I would be in favor of a large-scale advertising campaign that in the most stark and graphic terms made plain the connection between American kids buying these drugs and the violence and social disasters these kids are contributing to by purchasing their drugs.

As I imagine it, it wouldn't be the feeble "Just Say No" campaign of the late '80s (which some contend did in fact have a moderate beneficial, though perhaps temporary, impact on lessening drug use) - but a much more powerful and graphic approach. If talented Hollywood filmmakers can affect these kids so much through their movies, perhaps the same talent applied to sending the message that drug usage contributes to violence, poverty and tragedy might have an effect on at least some portion of these kids.

Libertarians might certainly prefer legalizing all of the illegal drugs (or are there some they would still outlaw?), but I would think attempting to use the power of persuasion to appeal to people in making their own choices fits into libertarian thinking.

[monday]

“We could easily wipe out the sources of these drugs in Afganistan and/or Columbia, but then those country’s economies would collapse.”

lol, so you think we are sparing drug crops because we are worried about these countries economies? How delightfully naive! We can’t even wipe out the billions of dollars worth of marijuana grown in our own own country, much of it in National and State parks. How are we supposed to be able to permantly wipe out drugs grown thousands of miles away?

Believe me, we have tried, showing no mercy to those countries economies. The farmers simply replant elsewhere. We would have to burn entire countries to the ground, salt the earth, and kill all the people, and even then, other countries would simply step in and start growing in their place.

If you knew anything about market economics you would know that wherever there is a demand for a product, there will always be a supply. Simply banning a product never works.

[Sandor Clegane]

Libertarians might certainly prefer legalizing all of the illegal drugs (or are there some they would still outlaw?), but I would think attempting to use the power of persuasion to appeal to people in making their own choices fits into libertarian thinking.

As a libertarian kind of guy, I think you can do both. If I had my way, I'd keep the products like crack, heroin, meth, and probably pcp as well, keep them all illegal, treating it kind like we do moonshine today. Legalize the base products (coca and opium, et al), which would allow companies to make products that would be both safer and probably cheaper than they could find with dealers. Demand would naturally crash for the illicit substances, and since the work would still be illegal, there'd be a lot fewer people accepting the new risk/reward conundrum.

I think these PSA's are a fine idea, but usually more ineffective than we want to believe. Basically it's telling kids, who are naturals at rebelling against authority, that the authorities don't want them trying these substances under any circumstances. In other words, a recipe for disaster. Remember the laughably bad "marijuana smokers are funding terrorists" campaign after 9/11?

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

Remember the laughably bad "marijuana smokers are funding terrorists" campaign after 9/11?

Yeah I do. But all of these anti-drug PSA campaigns have been feeble and poorly-executed pablum, and we've never had real talent apply their efforts to this sort of thing.

[GoldenPup]

I was merely pointing out that we have the “Way”. Having the “Will” is an entirely different subject.

[TKDietz]

I think they’ve paid big bucks to get some of the best in the industry to do these ad campaigns. I don’t think it’s a question of talent or lack thereof. The problem is that these ads are always going to smell like government propaganda. We’ll never convince some kid who smokes a joint every once in a while that he’s causing all sorts of mayhem all over the world. Young people by and large are just not going to believe this. Young pot smokers who saw these post 9/11 anti marijuana ads were saying, and they were probably right, that you’re supporting terrorism more when you fill up your gas tank than when you smoke a joint, especially considering the fact that most marijuana consumed here is produced either locally or in Mexico or Canada, with almost none of that available in this country coming from the Middle East. Also, whose fault is it that illegal drug profits go to organized crime and maybe in some cases terrorists? These profits wouldn’t go to the bad guys if these substances were legal and regulated like alcohol. I don’t care how well we package the propaganda, it’s not going to sell to our youth, especially if we focus most all of our effort on marijuana smokers like we have been doing. That really ticks me off. Marijuana may be the most widely used illicit intoxicant, but it’s the least of our worries compared to drugs like meth, heroin, prescription painkillers like Oxycontin, etc. I say we need to stop blowing so much money on anti-pot ads and spend it instead on ads that show people with meth mouth, people struggling with lifelong addictions, stealing from people they love, going to prison, etc.

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

I say we need to stop blowing so much money on anti-pot ads and spend it instead on ads that show people with meth mouth, people struggling with lifelong addictions, stealing from people they love, going to prison, etc.

Actually, I never suggested focusing the ad campaign on pot. These things you cite are exactly the kinds of ads I would like to see. Gritty, realistic, graphic, strong, shocking.

If they've paid big bucks for their ads, they haven't gotten their money's worth because pretty much all of the ad campaigns I've seen used in the past few decades have sucked.

[microgood]

Give me a plane and a load of roundup and I’ll get rid of the poppy fields. No brainer here.

Afghanistan is the size of Texas.

In addition, they have been doing that to coca plants in Columbia for years and all it has done is spread out the fields, move them into the National Parks where they cannot spray, or my favorite, develop a roundup resistance strain of the plant(actually figured out by the locals).

Spraying has actually made the farmers more efficient and increased their yield substantially.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

You know the drug war is going bad when the Washington Compost is reporting on it.

The Drug War is a big fat joke. All you have to do is secure the borders and turn over drug policy to the states, and stop subsidizing drug addicts. The problem will take care of itself.

[traviskicks]

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