Further Evidence of Failing Drugs Policy in Afghanistan

Apart from demonstrating ably that state building from scratch can be a particularly difficult task, the state of Afghanistan today may just have the unintended consequence of opening up the discussion on international narcotics policy. At the risk of repetition, this blogger has commented in earlier posts that state that the attempts at the eradication of opium poppy in Afghanistan are ill-informed and bound for failure. Different stories on the International Herald Tribune and BBC news here support that claim in interesting ways. The IHT story states that drug cultivation has not only returned in full force in Balkh province of Afghanistan where it was considered eradicated, but that the farmers have instead opted for cultivation of cannabis. The stated reasons are interesting and relate to price incentives. These are that cannabis is less laborious and more cost-effective to grow in an arid area in addition to a higher yield for acreage. The BBC story states reports that the Senlis Council has taken the initiative to establish an experiment to legalize the cultivation of opium for the production of pharmaceuticals.

Together, these reports are fascinating because the first provides a reminder that the eradication of drug cultivation is increasingly fraught with problems while the other is that a mechanism to get some of those plants to market may be more helpful. I grant that the experiment Senlis Council is worthy of consideration though I suspect that the attempt to limit all production for processing into pharmaceuticals will only establish competition with alternative uses and leakage of drugs to that sub-market would arise over time.

Nevertheless, this shows that substantial steps towards legalization and regulation would be more useful since those simple farmers already understand that their land and labour put together would lead to a very high value product. They would most probably be prepared to pay a tax (which presently is appropriated by the Taliban) than cultivate crops that are obviously less lucrative. Constitutional provisions that bar cultivation will hardly change that reality but will only ensure that the policy is not reviewed appropriately and that poor citizens of that nation will merely see that law as really idiotic.