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April 02, 2007
Drugs, again - discussion of legalising Afghan opium production
Interesting story in last Independent on Sunday:
The 'IoS' can reveal Tony Blair is considering calls to legalise poppy production in the Taliban's backyard. The plan could cut medical shortages of opiates worldwide, curb smuggling - and hit the insurgents
At least on the surface, this seems like a positive thing: to be blunt, attempts to limit Afghan opium production have been strikingly unsuccessful (growth reduction programmes failing to prevent the production of large and larger opium crops). At least such a move towards legalisation might stop making a bad situation worse.
However, Steve Rolles (Transform Drug Policy Foundation) argues that
Afgahanistan's status as a failed state and war zone presents insurmountable obstacles. Although such an illicit-to-licit transition has been achieved in Turkey and India, this required a high level of infrastructural investment, state intervention and security apparatus, something Afghanistan is entirely lacking in its current chaotic and lawless state.
The security situation in much of Afghanistan is such that the UN struggles to get staff in to estimate opium production. The idea that some kind of government ministry could control the opium production is completely unrealistic: you'd need an army, along with significant potential to 'project force' (which, at least for a while, would mean NATO troops would need to play a substantial role). It is also just this type of use of force which NATO has been cautious about becoming involved in - attacking a lot of relatively poor farmers with fairly easy access to weapons is likely to generate a hostile response.
As Rolles notes, demand for illegal opiates will persist even if the Afghan supply is stopped (not something which is likely to happen soon). So long as thinking on Afghan opiate production remains caught within the rubric of a 'war on drugs' - which seeks to use force to prevent the production of illegal/unregulated opium - there isn't any apparent way out of the current mess.
The trade in illegal opiates is already an excellent example of the efficacy of globalisation: these can be produced, produced and sold across a number of state borders and without effective state interference. What may be more hopeful than any rhetoric of the 'war on drugs' is to view the trade in opiates as just that - a trade - and to seek a move to a free and fair trade in Afghan poppies and poppy products. There certainly isn't any easy or 'obvious' solution to the problems in Afghanistan - but this might be one situation where globalised trade can play an important part in the solution.
Posted by jon_mendel at April 2, 2007 07:08 PM
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