What's Wrong With This Picture? The Afghan Poppy Problem

It was just announced that Canada will be sending another $25 million in food aid to Afghanistan, in addition of course to our ongoing military mission to chase away the Taliban and win the "hearts and minds" of Afghani citizens. In other news, the US government continues to raze crops all over the country in its (failing) efforts destroy the local opiate industry. Poppies are the target of destruction, but of course food crops are also taken out as collateral damage. Just a guess, but it seems unlikely that any of this is helping with the hearts and minds thing.

Although the US White House and State Department are pushing to ramp up "the war on poppies" by spraying the country with herbicides, an increasing number of voices now seem to think that this would be a bad idea - Afghan President Hamid Karzai and even the CIA and Pentagon worry such a move would further destabilize the country. Some, such as the SENLIS council and U of Toronto chemist John Polanyi have even advocated creative solutions, such as legalizing Afghan opiate production to supply the legal market for medicinal painkillers like morphine and codeine. But is demand for medicinal opiates high enough for the global market to absorb a massive influx of Afghani crops while maintaining sustainable pricing? Apparently a staggering 93% of the world's opiates are currently produced in Afghanistan. Presumably, right now all of this is going onto the "black" market. So, by my rough non-economist calculations this would mean about a 10-fold increase in medicinal opiate supply if the Afghan industry were suddenly legalized. Who's going to buy the stuff? Are doctors going to be suddenly prescribing 10-fold more opiate pain-killers?

Anyway I'm no economist, but hopefully some smart person with a calculator is trying to figure out something useful that could be done with Afghanistan's poppies. It seems a strange irony that the same red flowers Canadians wear to remember our fallen veterans are now at the center of a war our troops are currently fighting.