Poppies as legitimate industry?

[velvetpage]

http://www.herald.ns.ca/Opinion/537620.html

This seems like a good idea to me. Africa gets cheap painkillers, the pharmaceutical companies make a few bucks, and Afghanistan gets an economy that isn't built on creating misery. It's a win-win situation.

Unless, of course, you happen to be Bush & co., for whom poppies are Teh Evil because you can get street drugs from them, and we're in the middle of a War on Drugs, right?

Thanks to siobhan63 for the link.

Comments

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's quite that simple. The kind of painkillers you get from poppies, morpheine based painkillers, are very addictive. In fact, some criminology authors I've read have claimed that the heroin problem has its origins in vets returning from WWII addicted to morpheine administered to treat the pain of wounds.. So flooding the world with cheap painkillers might have unintended consequences. Not to metion the appetite for legitimate painkillers is alway small compared to the demand created by addicts.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The thing is, we're not currently able to meet the needs for the legitimate stuff worldwide. We wouldn't have to flood our market - we'd just be able to meet some of the existing demand.

Frankly, even if it went to waste, buying the poppies is good business sense for the West. Once the country is a bit more stable, other crops can be encouraged, but stability must come first and this is a way to get it.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and I think it wouldn't take all that much to life the Afghani farmers enough out of poverty that they wouldn't overproduce the stuff. Figure they would grow some popppies, some of whatever random cash crop thrives in drier mountainous areas and so forth. And, yeah, buying up their commodity or even paying them to grow more legit crops would be a good idea along with providing military patrols in their areas to prevent the drug traffickers from forcing to grow the crap. That later has been recurring problem.

[siobhan63.livejournal.com]

According to the Senlis Council, the richest countries (the United States, United Kingdom, France, Japan, Germany, Australia and Canada) consume nearly all of the world's opiates, leaving 80 per cent of the globe's population virtually without. By 2015, the World Health Organization estimates there will be 10 million cancer cases per year in the developing countries, in addition to the millions of cases of HIV/AIDS. The WHO describes the expected demand for opium-based medicines as a “world pain crisis.”

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Wow! Talk about an under reported crisis. I had no idea. Hell, open those floodgates. I'll file this under things us North Americans take for granted.

[neosis.livejournal.com]

It seems like a genuinely interesting way to deal with the problem of religious fundamentalism in Afghanistan, the Taliban banned poppy production, if the Nato forces were to embrace it and reward it suitably there should be a very economic shift in the popular opinion. Destroying other people's property never goes over well, but engaging them in a profitably trade agreement always reduces tensions. The more trade there is the most it costs to disrupt that trade.

And that's why the U.S. won't go for it until at least the next session of congress. The Republicans aren't interested in Afghanistan any more, they only care about showing the world that they can beat the Iraqis.

[hillarygayle.livejournal.com]

We're also in the middle of a war on common sense.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Which is why this won't happen, and why, twenty or thirty years from now, people will write history books that relegate Afghanistan to the same category as Vietnam in the "worst ideas of the American government" list.

Meanwhile, my brother is trying to get a tour of duty there.

[kesmun.livejournal.com]

This reminded me of a "news" story I saw on how apparently some troops (and versions I've seen insert the country whose citizens they want to stereotype as dingy) run into a "jungle of marijuana" and get a bright idea. They... burn it down.

A fabulous idea just formed in my head. We need to grow a humongous Mary Jane forest in Iraq, choose a day when the wind is right, and burn it. Hopefully, then all the smoke will go to the insurgents, and they'll end up mellow enough to quit fighting.

I didn't say it was a sensible idea. Just a fabulous one.