Cannabis replacing opium poppies in Afghanistan

[Pawn Power]

I am puting thins in politics because it involves the economic and agricultural situation in relation to law in a war ravaged Afganistan.

http://img.iht.com/images/2007/11/04/04cannabis550.jpg


KHWAJA GHOLAK, Afghanistan: Amid the multiplying frustrations of the fight against narcotics in Afghanistan, the northern province of Balkh has been hailed as a rare and glowing success.

Two years ago the province, which abuts Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, was covered with opium poppies - about 11,000 hectares of them, or 27,000 acres, nearly enough to blanket Manhattan twice. This year, after an intense anti-poppy campaign led by the governor, Balkh's farmers abandoned the crop. The province was declared poppy free, with 12 others, and the provincial government was promised a reward of millions of dollars in development aid.

...


The farmers said they would not grow cannabis only if the government provided an alternative source of livelihood or improved the market for their legal crops.

"If, in the future, the government helps the farmers - and really helps - we will destroy all the poppy and cannabis," said Hoshdel, 40, a well-weathered farmer in Khwaja Gholak who has nine children.

"If they don't help us, I swear I'll grow it."

Cannabis replacing opium poppies in Afghanistan (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/04/asia/cannabis.php)

[Lenin II]

Typical. A bourgeoisie state dedicates itself to treating the symptoms--not the disease. This is essentially no different than any other "War on Drugs." They seek to imprison their own people for having a social ill they themselves have sown.

[Comrade Nadezhda]

It defeats the entire point of the "war on drugs", so why bother? It's pointless-- you either do or you don't-- not just get rid of half the problem if the intention is to eliminate it-- otherwise why even make the effort?

[spartan]

I think the Capitalists are fucking thick as shit as they are missing a perfect opportunity to exploit a guaranteed gold mine and make billions if not trillions of fucking dollars!

I mean if you legalised all recreational drugs then your economy would be making billions of dollars due to the growing of the drugs by farmers, thus creating a new industry and giving farmers a new lease of life, and the fact that as they are now legal, and popular with a vast majority of your citizens, the Government can tax them.

Also all organized criminals dealing specifically in illegal drugs, a major part of most modern organized crime, will be forced out due to competition (The criminals cant give away their goods for free!) thus freeing your country of a huge problem as well as freeing up prison space as a hell of alot of prisoners are only in prison for petty things such as dealing and/or taking drugs.

I am not advocating that they do this but you would have thought that the Capitalists were smart enough to see the potential benefits, of what i have just proposed, for themselves?

[Labor Shall Rule]

Gholak, like millions of other farmers in the region, have to rely on the homescale production of narcotics to sustain his family.

As was aforementioned, if "the government helps the farmers", rather than burning down their farms and fields after the first sighting of poppy plants, the farmers would find an alternative to the backwards, rural lifestyle that they are subjected to.

But since local warlords, mercenary armies funded by drug kingpins, as well as imperialist forces are beneficiaries of this shadow business, it will most likely continue. The pauperized farmers, agricultural laborers, and relatively tiny industrial working class have to push the occupation out, as well as combat tribal leaders if they want to truly rid of the sale of poppy seeds and now cannabis in and out of their country.

[Pawn Power]

UK's new Afghanistan plan: pay farmers to ditch opium (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,2208738,00.html)


Troops may target drugs factories as part of strategy to combat Taliban

Gordon Brown is planning a radical scheme to subsidise farmers in Afghanistan to persuade them to stop producing heroin, as part of a wide-ranging drive to re-energise policy in the conflict the prime minister now regards as the front line in the fight against terrorism.

The Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown has admitted that the rise in opium production in the country means Britain "cannot just muddle along in the middle" and must come up with more imaginative ideas on opium eradication.

[Cheung Mo]

Why is opium eradiction so important? Opium is a less dangerous depressant than alcohol (the same cannot be said of some of the former's obscenely potent deivatives) and was only banned in the West because racist White fucks wanted to make life miserable for Chinese immigrants. Personally, I'm much more sympathetic to the Chinese immigrants who were wanting a peaceful and prosperous life in their new homeland than I am to evangelical, Hasidic, and Islamist lunatics who demand that our bourgeois institutions impose their reactionary moral hygiene on people who -- by means of favourable material conditions -- have been able to escape the curse of having their lives centred around batshit crazy Mesopotamian myths. People who take dietary and sexual advice from the Levites have by all means the right to do so; but if they insist that others should do likewise, their views should be pushed to the sidelines.

[Entrails Konfetti]

I wonder if this has to do with the US Occupation.
The number one cash crop in the USA (though illegal) is Cannibis.

Maybe theres a connection.