Comments on: Jonathan Power: Legalizing Poppy Growing in Afghanistan

By: Andrew Lussier

Andrew Lussier — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:29:32 +0000

Aikens points are valid as they are a basic lesson in economics. If the illicit market share decreases then the prices will rise. Emphasis needs to be placed less on eradication, as it has pushed Afghan farmers into the arms of the Taliban. The foundation U.S. Counternarcotics strategy should be infrastructure development, as it would at the very least curtail the growth of the insurgency and promote good relations with the the U.S. Without the tools necessary for profitable-legal cultivation, there will be no end in sight. Afghanistan's infrastructure is in shambles after many years of conflict, and the Afghan people need to be proud of where they live. The way to achieve this is to not only rebuild roads, and irrigation, but to improve the aesthetics of the country in general. Approaching all five counternarcotic pillars simultaneously is unrealistic and we need to focus on infrastructure, border security and eliminating Taliban's processing tools.

By: David

David — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:27:26 +0000

This doesn't change any of your substantive points but you are incorrect in describing heroin, morphine, and codeine. You say "Heroin is the strongest of all pain suppressants, although a derivative, morphine, is more widely used in hospitals today. Another derivative is codeine." Morphine is the main active ingredient in opium, although there are many others. It is heroin that is a synthetic derivative of morphine, first synthesized in 1874, ironically in the pursuit of a less addictive alternative to morphine. Codeine is also naturally present in opium but in a much lesser concentration and, like heroin, it is usually derived from morphine. Of the three, heroin is in fact the most effective in relieving pain but is by no means the "strongest of all pain suppressants." Not by a long shot. Fentanyl, for instance, is about 100x as potent as morphine while heroin is about 3x as potent. Etorphine, meanwhile, is 1000s of times more potent than morphine and is used to immobilize large animals such as elephants.

By: Cenneth

Cenneth — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:11:39 +0000

You seem to have missed the fairly obvious point that the money from legalized poppies would still be going back to the Taliban. Thus, we would be helping the enemy by allowing thier crops to grow unmolested. The farmers are simply caught in the middle here. They have no money for seed for legitimate crops and no way to get such crops to commerce centers. The solutions to these problems are to eradicate the Taliban, and provide the neccesary seeds for legitimate crops, and the infrastructure to get them to market.

By: Matthieu Aikins

Matthieu Aikins — Sat, 23 May 2009 13:10:10 +0000

I thought a stake had been driven through this nonsensical idea. The logic against it is fairly self-evident. Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan takes place in areas that are largely outside of the writ of government control, or else in areas where central authority is so heavily dependent on local powers who are involved in the drug trade that curtailing cultivation is unwise. (This is evident by the fact that much of Afghanistan's north and east have become poppy free due to successful government intervention.)

Thus, in the absence of effective coercive techniques (aerial spraying, which could possibly work, is political unfeasible, see Schweich's NYT essay) the only way to collect poppy crops would be to offer prices near the market rate for illicit opium. That was about $70/kg in 2008. Now, not only would buying up the opium crop at this price provide an incentive to plant more opium (as legal opium would carry much lower costs of production and risks), not only would it seriously undermine anti-poppy progress in the rest of the country where farmers have been persuaded with great difficulty, through a mix of incentives and coercion, to abandon poppy cultivation, but it would also ignite a vicious cycle of rising poppy prices.

Think about it. The world market for illicit opiates, which runs in the hundreds of billions of dollars and derives nearly 90% of its supply from Afghanistan, needs opium and has the resources to pay for it. If the supply of illicit opium is reduced through a poppy buying program, then the price for illicit opium will increase–consider that, in the year following the Taliban's rather successful ban of opium production in the 2001 harvest, opium prices shot up to $300/kg in 2002 (these are all UNODC figures.)

Even in the south, opium production currently occupies only a fraction of arable land, something like 10%. There's plenty of room to grow more poppy, and if we start buying poppy at market rates, both prices and poppy cultivation will keep increasing.

The problem of poppy cultivation is a problem of governance. Until the government of Afghanistan establishes its writ of law in these areas–both by pushing back the insurgency and reducing the endemic involvement in the narcotics trade within its own ranks–then the market for illicit opium will dictate illicit cultivation. Period.