We can send troops over to Afghanistan and use force to suppress criminals and thugs.
The actions will probably help to suppress the Taliban, and help to stabilize Pakistan.
Keep in mind, this report is from 1998.
http://www.cedro-uva.org/...
A recent report of the United Nations' International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) stated that many estimations have been made of the total revenue of the illicit drug industry, most ranging from $300 billion to $500 billion (INCB 1997) According to this UN report "a growing body of evidence" suggests that the true figure lies around $400 billion. The report further states this turnover would be equivalent to approximately eight percent of total international trade. In 1994 this figure would have been larger than the international trade in iron and steel and motor vehicles and about the same size as the total international trade in textiles.
Here's the obvious conclusion at the end of this paragraph.
Of course, the important economic value of drugs can be largely attributed to the simple fact they are illegal.
Since this report was written in 1998, the role of Afghani poppy has become much more prevalent than stated in that article. But the core truth is here for all of us to see, and maybe begin to understand.
McCoy has described how, during the 1980s, Afghanistan became Europe’s main opium supplier, because CIA covert operations transformed southern Asia from a self-contained opium zone into a major supplier of heroin for the world market: "CIA intervention provided the political protection and logistic linkages that joined Afghanistan’s poppy fields to heroin markets in Europe and America" (McCoy 1991, p. 441).
McCoy, A.W. (1991), The politics of heroin - CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, New York: Lawrence Hill Books
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So yes, Mr. President, we understand.
We can 'crush the Taliban', and stabilize Pakistan to make it more safe for their nuclear weapons.
How outrageously ironic. We are compelled to send our people to fight and die for that.
As for 'Al-Qaeda', they'll simply pack up and move to Somalia, or some other nation in distress, and set up shop there. Poppy, coca, hemp. Just more of the same. The never ending cycle of 'global terror' and blowback it brings, fed in large part by the illegal drug trade.
We have the ability to use our military force and will likely succeed in the limited objectives outlined by President Obama. We will win a skirmish, yet the war continues.
I think it's time to do something to end the larger war, Mr. President.
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Yes, there are other economic avenues available to criminals, but inexpensive plants such as poppy, coca, hemp [all of which can be grown in places such as the US, poppy and coca were grown in the US in early 20th century] are easy ways to generate huge amounts of capital outside of the mainstream economic system. Farmers and their distribution networks can be co-opted, threatened, intimidated in areas where government influence is weak.
Some areas of the world have such an ingrained drug culture, the government is transparently part of the drug network. Morocco is an excellent example of this, where the hashish trade feeds Europe, and the whole operation is approved at diplomatic levels with an outright wink and nod. But it's situations like that we see with the Taliban, along with tribal warlords controlling the poppy trade in Afghanistan is more typically the way the drug trade is maintained, through a rouge government and para-military groups.
Over and over, this market dynamic has been brought up as an issue for law enforcement.
The War on Drugs in the US had failed. Some 900,000 people in the US are addicted to heroin, and roughly about an equal number of people in Europe.
So we have a de facto cycle of world criminality, terrorism, and thuggery, aided and abetted by the very system of laws making these drugs illegal in the first place. Using various mixes of politics and religion as 'legitimate reasons' for their actions, these criminals calling themselves 'freedom fighters' will continue to use markets for illegal drugs as a source of profit, a source which accounts for anywhere from 8% to one-eighth of the world's economy [depending upon whose numbers you use] to garner money and power for themselves.
So what is the answer?
End the market. Legalize and regulate poppy, coca and marijuana.
Marijuana should be taxed, regulated and treated as a controlled commodity much as alcohol is.
Other drugs such as those obtained from the poppy and coca plant should be more tightly controlled; while there are legitimate uses for products from both of these plants, access should be restricted to legitimate medical use. Addicts need to be treated for what they are: sick people. Poppy and coca plants should be grown here in the US and Europe; cut the criminals who grow it for profit off at the knees. If grown overseas, the farmers could be part of a legal market system as they transition to growing food.
In a country like Afghanistan, the West could offer to buy the poppy outright this year, with an understanding that next year we expect to buy less, and increasingly less over time. It would completely and immediately deny the profit to the Taliban. The poppy purchased could directly go into drug treatment programs in the West to help wean addicts off the drug. It would help smash the addict/supplier relationship at the local level as well, making recovery from the addiction much more likely.
By providing a fixed price for poppy in Afghani market place, we would simultaneously offer to buy grains and vegetables at good prices, reinforcing market conditions that would quickly degrade the remaining market for this drug. It would rapidly change the country's internal market dynamics, and help reinforce the central government. War lords and other tribal leaders could be brought in as part of the administration of this change.
This market dynamic could apply in every situation for plant based drugs that should be highly controlled, narcotics like poppy and coca. Yes, criminals could still intimidate farmers to grow these crops: but without a market to sell them on, the meaning of this action would soon become fruitless.
While there are a myriad of drugs abused by sectors of the population, none of these has the market dynamic of poppy, coca and marijuana. I doubt Al-Qaeda is going to be setting up meth stills in order to generate capital to fund their terrorist network.
As long as we make drugs that are easily grown illegal, criminals will take advantage of this to make lives miserable, all the way up and down the chain from producer to user. Treat the narcotic addicts as sick people. Take those drugs which are relatively benign, tax and regulate them for purity as we do alcohol and tobacco.
Changing some of the drug laws would help make the world a better place, for the people who are threatened and intimidated into producing them, to the users who are addicted to them. It denies criminals and thugs power and profit. I think it's a path nations should seriously be considering, and some in Europe are leading the way towards these changes.
The President and Congress could change history, by changing these laws.