Poppies were the first thing that British army Capt. Leo Docherty noticed when he arrived in Afghanistan’s turbulent Helmand province in April 2006. “They were growing right outside the gate of our Forward Operating Base,” he told me. Within two weeks of his deployment to the remote town of Sangin, he realized that “poppy is the economic mainstay and everyone is involved right up to the higher echelons of the local government.”
Docherty was quick to realize that the military push into northern Helmand province was going to run into serious trouble. The rumor was “that we were there to eradicate the poppy,” he said. “The Taliban aren’t stupid and so they said, ‘These guys are here to destroy your livelihood, so let’s take up arms against them.’ And it’s been a downward spiral since then.”
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.”
Supply is so plentiful that the price of a gram of heroin is plummeting in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom. According to the UNODC, the street price of a gram of cocaine in the United States is now less than $70, compared with $184 in 1990. Adjusted for inflation, that’s a threefold drop.
In Washington, the war on drugs has been a third-rail issue since its inauguration. It’s obvious why — telling people that their kids can do drugs is the kiss of death at the ballot box. But that was before 9/11. Now the drug war is undermining Western security throughout the world. In one particularly revealing conversation, a senior official at the British Foreign Office told me, “I often think we will look back at the War on Drugs in a hundred years’ time and tell the tale of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes.’ This is so stupid.”
As much as this article offers, it only scratches the surface. Corporations profit from fighting the War on Drugs – organized crime profits from the logistics. The response from our political hierarchy of hypocrites and reactionaries continues to be grounded in moralizing and prohibition. We know how well they work.
Some folks actually work at resolving questions like this.
#13: Will always? Difficult, given that it was dissolved in 1858…
I’m sure their relatives gave up control, and the profit it entailed… Bloodlines tend to carry on traditions, last i heard.
#20 – Mark Derail.
You have some very good ideas there. Two minor points though:
1) The water has to come from somewhere. We’re depleting our aquifers and all other fresh water reserves.
2) You said, God knows the the Army Corps of Engineers are really good in diverting water. I think this may be true only when they want to flood a city, see MRGO.
18 And for the people who think it’s bankrupt, be prepared to back up why you think that a fund with two trillion dollars worth of the lowest risk investment in the U.S. (treasuries) is actually bankrupt.
Because – as you well know – our Commander in Chief has gone on record as saying those securities are “…worthless IOUs from the US Government…”
http://mediamatters.org/items/200504290004
Most major televised media outlets failed to note that President Bush, in his one-hour press conference on April 28, made two flatly contradictory statements about the viability of U.S. treasury bonds, in which the Social Security trust fund is invested. Repeating a claim made in his recent travels throughout the country in support of Social Security privatization, Bush said that the treasury bonds owned by the trust fund represent worthless IOUs from the U.S. government. But he later touted those same bonds for holders of his proposed private accounts looking for a safe investment that would be “backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government.”
Don’t you just hate a “flip-flopper”?
And then there was also that “file cabinet” press event:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/04/20050405-1.html
#20, Mark,
Interesting comments.
One place where they have made a strong push to educate against tobacco is Canada. Half the package are depictions of the down side to smoking. There are pictures of lungs, blackened with cancer; mouth cancer, throat cancer, etc. It has been a few years since I saw any Canadian tobacco packages, maybe some Canadians DU contributers could add to the list.
Anyway, using that strong anti-smoking message, I believe the smoking rate is about half that of the US.
#1 & 21, green,
Get a life. Screaming “conspiracy” only shows your moranity (new word).
It is my personal opinion that narco-corruption extends all through our federal government, even to the White House, as exemplified by Nixon, Clinton, and quite possibly Bush. There is SO MUCH MONEY involved, that, IMO, federal judges, DEA and FBI agents, and the local cop on the beat is on the take.
Now, alcohol prohibition did not end because all realized it was stupid, which they did. It ended because the Great Depression radically reduced the proceeds of the income tax, thereby making revenues from alcohol taxes of great import. It was all about money. The autorities of the day didn’t want to end the gravy train of graft, just as our authorities of today don’t want to end the gravy train of graft.
I feel the same occurs today. Anyone with a lick of sense can see that this “War on Drugs” is both a failure and a sham. It corrupts our government, wars on the populace, and drives otherwise law-abiding citizens into the arms of criminals.
Because of all this, a large proportion of the citizenry is criminalized, and subject to control. Which, it seems, it the goal.
In a word, it’s all insane. Or, in a few more words, it’s all crooked as a broken back snake, and a total lie.
Whaat you or I put into our bodies is our business, and none other’s.
All, there’s plenty of water in Afghanistan.
Before the wars they were plenty of canal systems, after all, that part of the world has probably had irrigation since the Roman Empire.
The soil in Afghanistan is quite rich, and their weather allows many crops per year.
So buy buying out the crops from drug farmers, in South America too, for a higher price than the local thugs, and helping them with irrigation, will be a double win.
Trying to fix things at home is a hopeless cause. If you buy out 90% of the drugs at their source, where it’s the cheapest, causing massive shortages, the price on the street will skyrocket out of proportion.
Just look at corn crops going up, doubled in the last few years.
If the street price of drugs doubled or tripled, I doubt crime would double & triple, would most likely be the same.
However people will get desperate, and desperate people make mistakes, making the Police’s job much easier.
As stupid as the War On (Some) Drugs is, it is not going to go away anytime soon nor easily. Those who are fighting this war want the money (and the power) that fighting drugs gives them, and those that are pushing the drugs don’t want it legalized because the WOSD makes it so much more profitable for them.
This country hasn’t learned anything from Prohibition.
#23 – Mark Voice,
I’ll read the statements later. But, what did that do to international ratings of U.S. Treasuries? Did the entire world treasury market collapse when Bush declared that they were worthless IOUs? I thought not. The reason is because everyone is quite confident that there is not (yet) any hint of the U.S. government defaulting on treasuries. They don’t get to pick and choose which creditors to pay. They would need to go into complete default to avoid payment.
I thought I remember Eideard discussing alternatives a few years back.
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=2910
At the time, GSK was paying $35-50K/yr to opium farmers in New Zealand. No subsidy. Cash crops.
20–”He had only one concern – how to tell DUI drivers apart?
Currently there’s no test, and no set limit.”
Tell your fat ass lazy stupid cop friend to look for violations of law/safety rather than a “presumption” based on chemical testing?
Pay the farmers in Afghanistan, and then you only have the rest of the world to pay off as well. Still, bio-fuel does have some merit to it==with the general caveat being that food source bio fuels is a generic bad idea.
Napalm, napalm, napalm…
That is the answer to that question. Use the Harriers, A-10s, and whatever else over there to burn down each and every poppy plant. No good comes from this product and it’s existence. Medical sedatitives can all be made synthetically now. Torch it, & screw those who have built their life on it…
On this other thread, at post #65, Mister Mustard suggested:
I wonder if Mr. Condell is troubled that many people are treating him like the Messiah of the 21st century.
Based on my reply in post #66, I’m voting for “The Selecter” [sic] in post #31 as the new messiah. S/he seems right on target for creating a nice peaceful planet.
#24: Get a life. Screaming “conspiracy” only shows your moranity (new word).
http://tinyurl.com/2qwpo9
Get a clue. hint: google
32–Scott, with all your excellent postings on our continuing yet still looming energy crises, how can you support someone ( ie #31, The Selector) who wants to take perfectly good gasoline that can be put in a gas tank of a car to shuttle about here and there and turn it into jelly just to be dumped on the ground?
Seems more than wasteful to me.
#34 – bobbo,
I think you missed my point about what a messiah would do. According to scripture, which you know I find not only silly but abhorrent and violent, when the messiah comes, there will be peace. There is peace on the moon. “The Selecter” [sic] is advocating a start along the way to making this planet as peaceful as the moon. Therefore, “The Selecter” [sic] may actually be the messiah out to create a nice peaceful lifeless world.
OK, I admit, my logic was a bit obscure and far out there.
Re: 35.
Way out there, but at least there is no drug problem on the moon…
i dont see what the problem is.
well ok I can see one problem – the USA govmt cant tax certain semi-legal agricultural products that are smuggled into this country – products which are only consumed by completely willing individuals, i might add – that seems to be the major thing that each of the “substances” that the govmt has a War against have in common.
I cant blame em, the’ve got a two front war to fund, but they’re looking at this all wrong.
what the govmt needs to do is leagalize the shit – all of it – and then make it legaly available, sold for essentially the same prices & regulated & taxed.
This allows the powers-that-be to have their tax without disrupting the economical ebb and flow that the distribution and sale/usage of drugs have; in addition to negating a large consumer-base for the various crime syndicates that are involved in the growing and/or distribution of the drugs in question.
thats not to say that smuggling wont exist after that happens, but if it is more economically viable for the average guy on the street to buy legally from a govmt regulated grower/chemist instead of going to Joey up the street, then it’d work & kill 2 birds with one stone.
28 Did the entire world treasury market collapse when Bush declared that they were worthless IOUs? I thought not. The reason is because everyone is quite confident that there is not (yet) any hint of the U.S. government defaulting on treasuries.
And it is that “(yet)” part which bothers me.
The markets didn’t respond because we still have surplus payments from Social Security payroll taxes coming in.
Bush’s argument was that when the surplus trickles down to non-existence – and that file cabinet of securities needs to be redeemed – where is the money going to come from?
Possible answers:
1. Higher payroll taxes
2. Slashing budgets for other programs
3. Reduced payments to retirees
4. All of the above
Bush’s argument was that any/all of those choices would be so unpopular as to not be politically feasible.
We’ll know if that’s true, or not, in a few years…
I still remember Bush coming into office with that Grover Norquist-style idea of “Starve the Beast”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve-the-beast
All of our deficit-spending to support the “War on Terror” will make it that much more difficult to balance the books – won’t it?
#38 — Mike Voice,
But, that still doesn’t mean that the gov’t can default on the $2T in Soc Sec without also defaulting on the rest of the $6T in its debt. (Or, is it another $8T? I’m never sure whether the debt to Soc Sec is included in the $8T national debt.)
“In Washington, the war on drugs has been a third-rail issue”
What a great line!