The Politics of Poppies

Simon at Power and Control has a disheartening post about our attempts to fight the Taliban by trying to stop the flourishing opium trade in Afghanistan.

All that has been tried in the USA for over 90 years. None of it has worked. Why? There are estimates out there that for every 1% increase in the interdiction budget drug profits rise 3%. So how much would we have to spend to drive the criminals and terrorists out of the narcotics business?

As Simon suggests, we would do more economic damage to the Taliban by doing "nothing", that is, by decriminalizing the trade. And the Boston Globe agrees, at least as far as Afghanistan goes.

There is no hope
of actually stopping
the trade in dope.

When a trade is banned,
you always find bad people
taking it in hand.