The Taliban’s Successful Opium Ban Is Bad for Afghans and the World
usip.org
usip.org
The article essentially boils down to a plea to let people grow hard drugs instead of the food they need to eat. "Money" is better than actual usable things they can grow.
That's how the economy works. It's called opportunity cost. You should always create the most valuable thing you can, assuming of course that you can sell all of it.
Outright prohibiting a crop obviously also serves that goal but it also weakens the states economy and could cause tensions if farmers lose profits.
And there are uses for opium besides street drugs. Opiates are used a lot in medicine.
An effort to foment resistance to the Taliban? Warmongering? A needle to complain about the withdrawal? I can't understand the motivation.
What sort of audience is so credulous and naive that they would believe opiate cultivation is the only path to human well being?
The motive is to keep you "informed". Your brain must not forget that taliban = bad.
> What sort of audience is so credulous and naive that they would believe opiate cultivation is the only path to human well being?
Usually children. But there are also adults, who don't have other sources of information besides government propaganda, which are an easy pray.
I don't know in which world miles of illegal poppy for an opiate black market is a good thing, either. I am quite certain if they had left the black market to its own devices, we'd be seeing "WAR ON DRUGS NOW! Taliban terrorists hook your child on heroin" instead.
Self reliance is important but generally less important than survival. If they don't have resources to treat opiate addicts they don't have to, the addicts are responsible for their own problems. We should try to help if we can but if we can't, we can't.
Poppy fields have legitimate uses, they are not just for producing street drugs. Heroin, morphine, codeine and others are products of the opium poppy and all of them are used medically. I also doubt this prohibition will make much difference in terms of drug addiction, they will get their drugs one way or another just like everywhere else.
If the best country in the world "does not have the resources to treat opiate addicts", how could a country bombed for 20 years by the best country in the world, have those resources ?