Comment by Sanho Tree: Afghanistan: UN To Force Poppy Farmers to Stop by  Destroying  Opium Value

 

The farmers are already growing it and the current policy of
eradicating small portions of it only helps drive up the prices.  By
letting farmers grow it unrestricted, there will be a glut and the
prices for opium will fall significantly (as it did in the late 1990s
when the Taliban let anyone grow it).

After the Taliban imposed prohibition in 2000, the price for a kilo
of dry opium shot up into the stratosphere.  Take a look at the spike
in dry opium prices on page 119 of this UN study
http://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan_Opium_Survey_2008.pdf
and you can see how prohibition provides a ridiculous price support
for illicit crops.  Once the price falls to a free market level
(perhaps around $30/kilo) it will no longer be profitable and farmers
will likely voluntarily switch to legal food crops (assuming our
agribusiness stops dumping cheap, subsidized grain under the guise of
food aid for Afghanistan).

The Taliban -- unlike our drug warriors and politicians -- understand
the law of supply and demand and there are reports they have been
trying to stockpile opium in an attempt to take some of it off the
market so they can drive up prices and thus fund their insurgency.

This is a common sense (but politically risky) move on the part of
the UN.  If drug reformers on ARO don't get why this makes sense,
then I fear the UN has moved ahead too quickly and could face a nasty
backlash from member governments.  But this has always been the
challenge  of drug reform -- our solutions are usually
counterintuitive and elected officials don't know how to frame more
complex arguments for their constituents.  Thus, drug warriors with
their knee jerk, get tough solutions have historically held the
strategic high ground because their visceral solutions are so easy to
message.  Politicians who know better are intimidated into keeping
quiet because they fear (perhaps irrationally) the possibility of
being Swift-boated or Willie Horton'ed by electoral challengers.

I once worked on a documentary called "Plan Colombia: Cashing in on a
Drug War Failure"
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Plan_Colombia_Cashing_in_on_the_Drug_War_Failure/70021025?lnkce=seRtLn&trkid=222336&lnkctr=srchrd-sr&strkid=767110585_0_0
which included an interview with Amb. William Brownfield in which
he explained, "Americans are a simple people and we like simple
answers."  He sounded quite silly saying it and audiences always
laugh incredulously at that line, but I fear no truer words were ever
spoken.  We're now paying a huge price for those simplistic policies,
but is it enough to get voters to turn off American Idol and actually
study an issue?

-Sanho

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UN TO FORCE POPPY FARMERS TO STOP BY DESTROYING OPIUM VALUE
Author: Jon Boone

Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
27 May 2009
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http://www.smh.com.au/

UNITED NATIONS officials in Afghanistan are trying to create a "flood
of drugs", which will destroy the value of opium and force poppy
farmers to switch to legal crops such as wheat.

After the failure to destroy fields of the scarlet flowers in the
volatile south, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime says the answer is
to stop the drugs from leaving the country.

"Manual eradication is incompetent and inefficient," the UNODC's
chief, Antonio Maria Costa, said during a visit to the western Afghan
province of Herat. "So we want to see more efforts to stop the flow
of drugs across Afghanistan's borders and the hitting of high-value
targets to create a market disruption.

"We want to create a flood of drugs within Afghanistan. There will be
so much opium inside Afghanistan unable to go out that the price will go
down."

Officials admit the plan is a second-best solution to intensive
eradication campaigns. Last year the Afghan Government succeeded in
destroying only 3.5 per cent of the country's 157,000 hectares of
poppy because eradication teams were either attacked or bought off by
drug lords. But the attempt to use economics to tackle the $4 billion
narcotics industry is fraught with problems - not least the country's
thousands of kilometres of porous borders.

Even without attempts to disrupt the flow of drugs out of the
country, Afghanistan is destroying the value of its main export.
Overproduction, which by some estimates twice outstrips world demand,
has led to a steady fall in the value of opium.

The UNODC country chief, Jean-Luc Lemahieu, said the strategy of
capitalising on falling opium prices could be torpedoed by Chinese
drug dealers looking to supply China's heroin addicts.

"I think we have a two-year window before the Chinese pick up on the
Afghan market. Currently the Chinese dealers source their heroin from
the Golden Triangle. The networks have not yet been established."
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