Tackling Afghanistan’s Opium Trade with Legalization

[freepalestine]

Bhattacharji: Tackling Afghanistan’s Opium Trade with Legalization

December 20, 2007


India is one of only a dozen countries allowed to grow opium poppies to export for the manufacture of legal drugs such as morphine. Romesh Bhattacharji, former narcotics commissioner for India, says he thinks India’s system of legalized opium growing can work in Afghanistan. Bhattacharji says India’s success with poppy growing (PDF) though an international licensing program for medicine production is largely due to a village control system, where if one farmer sells their crop illegally the entire area loses its license. He urges the adoption of this method in Afghanistan, where he says eradication efforts are ineffective and swaying support for the Taliban. ......

http://www.cfr.org/india/bhattacharji-tackling-afghanistans-opium-trade-legalization/p15117












http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2008/12/19/how-opium-can-save-afghanistan.html

[Prometeo liberado]

Very good post. When will the US syart to pour billions into India to "eradicate" the drug problem. Answer, they won't. Trumped by legalization. Wow what an idea! Until the issue of consumption is addressed the real problems of the user will never be resolved though.

[l'Enfermé]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Afghanistan_opium_poppy_cultivation_1994-2007b.PNG

The Taliban reduced Opium cultivation by 90 percent in a single year. Tackling Afghanistan's drug problem, or drug problems anywhere in the world, doesn't take anything other than the Government actually trying to eradicate the problem.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Responsible use isn't something to be worried about, that being said the imperialists need to drop all pretexts of this morality angle. They don't care about the opium just that the enemy uses it to help become a pain in their backside.

[blake 3:17]

The best most humane route would be to for medical agencies to buy Afghani opium at a fair market price.

[dodger]

LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE WILL CATCH A COLD. Narco-Dollars prop up and buy friends. At one time Indian Opium even financed the British Raj colonial administration. An old gag as they say. Expect moral outrage and hypocrisy and token efforts to eradicate. Pakistan my old work mates tell me on visits home and retirees is racked with hunger. Starvation, opium is a very corrosive drug for any society, addiction is endemic. News that has been unsanitized is often brutal, a most sad picture emerges.