Pubdate: Tue, 15 Nov 2005
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 The Vancouver Sun
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Don Cayo

LOGIC SAYS LEGALIZE DRUGS; REALITY SAYS IT WON'T HAPPEN

In Vancouver, we've all heard the arguments for legalizing street drugs.

For one thing, nobody can even pretend any more that prohibition works.

Just look at the streets and alleys of the Downtown Eastside, within 
spitting distance of the police station, to see how badly the policy 
has failed when it comes to hard drugs. Or sniff the air at any 
outdoor public event to get a whiff of failure on the softer side.

Nor can we ignore what happens when criminals direct one of our 
biggest industries. Grow rips -- ripoffs of marijuana growing 
operations -- volatile crystal meth labs, gang violence and 
intimidation, even murders: The drug trade is a nasty business that, 
legalization proponents maintain, would fade away if producing, 
possessing or selling the products were no longer against the law.

But the logical extension of these realities -- the case for 
legalization -- has not often been heard half a world away in 
Afghanistan, where the supply side of the drug trade dominates the economy.

So the Senlis Council, a Paris-based think-tank, is creating an 
international buzz with its recent proposal to legalize the growing 
of opium there.

The logic is simple.

Afghani peasants, most with few, if any, economic alternatives, grow 
enough opium poppies to supply 87 per cent of the world's illegal 
heroin; and a massive and expensive campaign, led by the U.S. and 
Britain, to eradicate the poppy crop isn't working very well.

It has only put a dint in the overall supply, yet in a few areas 
where the results have been better it has caused horrendous hardship 
for the former growers. Press reports say that many small 
sharecroppers who've lost their crops have been forced to sell their 
daughters to pay off the drug lords who bankrolled them.

Meanwhile, there's a shortage, especially in developing countries, of 
morphine and other medical opiates that could bring relief to 
patients in intense pain.

Voila! says Senlis. Why not license the growers, as has been done in 
countries like India and Turkey, and divert the poppies from the 
destructive heroin trade to benign medical uses?

The Afghan poppy trade is said to be worth about $2.7 billion US a 
year -- a little more than low-end estimates of the value of B.C.'s 
marijuana industry, and a little less than half the high range of 
estimates. But the money matters much more in a poor country that has 
as many people as Canada, yet has an income of 1/40th of ours and 
only two-thirds as much land as B.C.

So, will the Afghan government jump at the chance to legitimize an 
industry that employs as many as 2.3 million Afghanis and that brings 
in 12 to 13 per cent of the country's wealth?

Not likely. And in large part it will do nothing for the same reason 
that Canada is unlikely to legalize any narcotic, even marijuana, any 
time soon -- it will defer to the vociferous objections of the United States.

The Afghan minister of counter-narcotics, Habibulla Qaderi, notes 
quite sensibly that it would be difficult to implement the Senlis 
recommendation until the government gets a better handle on security 
in the country, which is for the most part still a wild and lawless place.

But the executive director of Senlis, Emmanuel Reinhart, has noted 
that the Afghan foot-dragging is also prompted by fear that it could 
lose massive amounts of aid, not only from the U.S., but also from Britain.

That reaction is not unlike Canada's reluctance to seriously pursue 
what looks like a better policy option for us for fear that the U.S. 
will lock down its borders and gum up our all-important trade relationship.

So the illicit drug trade -- and the destructive, ineffective war on 
drugs -- will be with us, and with Afghanistan, for a long time.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman