23536
Bluelight Crew
Afghanistan is the world's number one grower of poppies - and the country has now held this designation for an uninterrupted decade. Afghan opiates supply more than 90 per cent of European and Central Asian markets. Nothing impedes the narcotics trade, not the Karzai government declaring it illegal, not the Qur'an forbidding it, attempts to eradicate it by Governor-Led Eradication (GLE) teams, or the intervention of the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
The opium economy makes up an estimated 35 per cent of Afghanistan's GDP. It is vital to the livelihoods of millions of Afghans who work all along the poppy chain: from farming families, to heroin lab workers, to truckers who smuggle the drugs across borders.
Argibusiness or terrorism?
Afghanistan excels at poppy cultivation and the manufacturing of raw opium gum into a range of narcotics. Narcotics are global commodities that live double lives. They are sold legally to the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture into morphine and codeine for medicinal use (pain control and anesthesia) and are sold to the illegal market in the form of smokable opium and injectable heroin. If the production and sale of opiates were legal, such as the drugs caffeine and nicotine, Afghanistan wouldn't have a cabal of national and international narcotics control forces waging a violent drug war that criminalises ordinary Afghans trying to survive in a war-torn economy and brands the country an outlaw, failed "narco-state".
The drug warriors in the DEA, the White House and the Pentagon have intentionally conflated the war on drugs and the war on terror in Afghanistan. Call it a "twofer", more bang for the billions of bucks being spent to wage wars that have no exit strategies because they can never be won. Pairing drug hysteria with the fear of terrorism is powerful propaganda for the United States, and recasts and promotes what is in reality an imperialist war as a war against a "narco-insurgency" or "narco-terrorism". The ancient and pain relieving plant papaver somniferum [the opium poppy] is now referred to as a narco-terrorism crop. It is agribusiness, not terrorism.
. . .
The war on Afghan poppy can never be won. But there is a solution to the so-called poppy problem: License farmers to cultivate poppy and manufacture morphine to sell to the pharmaceutical industry. And secondly, to eliminate the black market, legalise and regulate the consumption of all drugs. Licensing and legalisation would have immediate and life changing benefits for the people of Afghanistan: Millions would no longer be considered criminals, violence would decrease, the salaam system of crop payment that rips off poppy farmers would be eliminated, drug profits would stay in the country, and the barbaric practice of selling young girls and women into sexual slavery to pay drug debts known as "opium brides" would end.
But the drug warriors don't want that because they're addicted to the drug wars and they need narco-terrorism to justify their imperialist fix.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/201162065858707533.html
The opium economy makes up an estimated 35 per cent of Afghanistan's GDP. It is vital to the livelihoods of millions of Afghans who work all along the poppy chain: from farming families, to heroin lab workers, to truckers who smuggle the drugs across borders.
Argibusiness or terrorism?
Afghanistan excels at poppy cultivation and the manufacturing of raw opium gum into a range of narcotics. Narcotics are global commodities that live double lives. They are sold legally to the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture into morphine and codeine for medicinal use (pain control and anesthesia) and are sold to the illegal market in the form of smokable opium and injectable heroin. If the production and sale of opiates were legal, such as the drugs caffeine and nicotine, Afghanistan wouldn't have a cabal of national and international narcotics control forces waging a violent drug war that criminalises ordinary Afghans trying to survive in a war-torn economy and brands the country an outlaw, failed "narco-state".
The drug warriors in the DEA, the White House and the Pentagon have intentionally conflated the war on drugs and the war on terror in Afghanistan. Call it a "twofer", more bang for the billions of bucks being spent to wage wars that have no exit strategies because they can never be won. Pairing drug hysteria with the fear of terrorism is powerful propaganda for the United States, and recasts and promotes what is in reality an imperialist war as a war against a "narco-insurgency" or "narco-terrorism". The ancient and pain relieving plant papaver somniferum [the opium poppy] is now referred to as a narco-terrorism crop. It is agribusiness, not terrorism.
. . .
The war on Afghan poppy can never be won. But there is a solution to the so-called poppy problem: License farmers to cultivate poppy and manufacture morphine to sell to the pharmaceutical industry. And secondly, to eliminate the black market, legalise and regulate the consumption of all drugs. Licensing and legalisation would have immediate and life changing benefits for the people of Afghanistan: Millions would no longer be considered criminals, violence would decrease, the salaam system of crop payment that rips off poppy farmers would be eliminated, drug profits would stay in the country, and the barbaric practice of selling young girls and women into sexual slavery to pay drug debts known as "opium brides" would end.
But the drug warriors don't want that because they're addicted to the drug wars and they need narco-terrorism to justify their imperialist fix.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/201162065858707533.html
