US Military War on Opium in Afghanistan Lost It's only 1/3 of their GDP, employing 600,000 people. The biggest source of funds for the Taliban and a way for them to control the police in most areas. The US spent $1.5 million a day to destroy it for the past 20 years and that failed miserably. Most of it goes to Europe and Canada. I say the US removes itself from overseas drug wars, let prices drop and focus on keeping drugs out of the country (all of US heroin/morphine comes from Mexico/Latin America). Increase border security (nothing to do with a wall).
It is also the main source of funds for our favored warlords and the government aside from our aid. No American soldier wants to be the last to die in our losing war there. No president wants to be the president who loses Afghanistan.
The U.S. should pull out of Afghanistan completely. It's only a matter of time until that thing goes all South Vietnam anyway. Total waste of money. Help get out the people who assisted us and are in danger and then Bon Voyage. If you need to go into Afghanistan in a limited way with drones/special forces you can do so.
I've said this for a decade or more: the US and EU should buy all of it from the farmers (cutting out the warlords) keep what we need for legitimate medicinal purposes, and dump the rest in the ocean. Way cheaper and more humane than trying to eradicate cultivation.
These operations run on a lot of... "hope for the future". Once you make it a commodity that afghanistan expects to be bought every year, you raise the chance of huge instability and a fall out if you have to take away that cash source one day. Also, once it has US$ backing it as a crap, a lot more will want to get into it and grow it. It's not a viable idea.
Of course it is, on a US/EU/UN mandated level to help fund a failed state. Just like other countries who have nationalized oil production.
What's the limit? What's the ceiling? Who decides which farmers get to grow it, and how much they can grow? What if they form a union with better eqipment and produce more and more per acre, since revenues are guaranteed? Why the US / EU pay them to grow something they have to throw away instead of pay them to do nothing? Then of course, a major event happens and you'll see the instability created when the US can't fund a high grade drug. And the market will find ways to take advantage of it, lower the street price, get more addicts. The potential for instability increases each year as more people become dependent on growing it, and people find ways to use it. It's stoner talk
This sounds exactly, literally exactly, like how Western countries handle crops like soybeans and wheat. And they feed the world. Your 2nd paragraph is complete garbage. Carry on. And I do mean "carry one", you are amusing.
they feed feedlot cows, not the world. Monocropping w/ heavy fertilization while soil dies is a very unhealthy practice if you ask any soy or corn farmer in the US. Then you inject those cows with antibiotics to keep them barely alive... it's a cycle of death. You don't seem to get the "addictive" nature of a class A drug, and the supply and demand that creates on the black market as opposed to legitimate food sources. Heroin tends to have a different effect on the body as wheat. If you can ensure only a certain amount is grown, ALL OF IT IS collected, the right amount is used for medicinal production, and the rest is disposed of cleanly, you can probably cure cancer as well
