Because it's just easier...

Only now do I remember to circle around and blog some shit about the debate over poppies in Afghanistan. My main provocation came Dec. 11 when Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani's Op-Ed ran in the New York Times. Ghani basically wants to eliminate a cash crop with enormous potential, something no well-run developing state should refuse. This is more than a thoughtless and automatic extension of the drug war; it's a sign that new leaders are unfortunately incapable of abandoning old and arcane trains of thought. Ghani's plan is to destroy this lucrative crop and then somehow work around it, find some other, more laborious way of generating that income. This is the sort of insane and inept state planning that results from our inflexible, unrealistic, and deceptive anti-drug morality. Instead of lviing with drugs and reaping some benefits, let's make it difficult on ourselves. Let's create difficulties, then turn those difficulties into policy. In some cases, difficulty is worth it, suffering is worth it. This is not one of those cases. This is a case of needless exacerbation. It is based on a well-entrenched and completely misguided conception of what state drug policy should be.

Christopher Hitchens' Dec. 13 Slate story proposes legalization and official monitoring of the poppy/narcotics trade, a difficult but probably more beneficial solution (one often proposed in any given drug policy debate). It would require wresting control of the trade from criminals, gangs and religious terrorist organizations—difficult work that would eventually enable the state and its citizens to profit from the crop for as long as conditions permitted.