Jacob Sullum says that drug warriors are playing into the Taliban’s hands:
Poppy farmers welcome the Taliban because the Taliban offer them ‘protection.’ Protection from whom? From their own government, which is trying to destroy their livelihood under pressure from the U.S. and the U.K.Afghanistan is one of the world’s poorest countries, and the UNODC estimates that opium accounted for more than 50 percent of its GDP in 2005. By his own account, then, Costa is demanding that the Afghan government wipe out half of the country’s economy, with conspicuous assistance from U.S. and British forces. Does that sound like a recipe for peace and stability?
It’s no mystery why barely subsisting Afghanis choose to grow opium poppies instead of legal crops, contrary to the wishes of foreign governments. According to the UNODC, a hectare of poppies earned farmers some $5,400 last year, about 10 times what they could get by growing wheat.
Western governments, the U.S. foremost among them, created this incentive by banning opium to begin with, thereby enabling criminals (including terrorists) to earn a risk premium. Having artificially boosted the price of opium, the U.S. now asks desperately poor Afghan peasants to resist this financial attraction for the sake of Westerners who fail to resist the pharmacological attraction of heroin.