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

[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.