There is no shortage of opium poppies in Afghanistan, despite the best efforts of ISAF forces to eradicate the controversial crop. There is a world shortage of essential opium-based medicines such as morphine and codeine. If these two circumstances can be brought together the Taliban can be undermined and the war shortened, Afghans can prosper as legitimate farmers instead of the suppliers of more than 90 per cent of the world's heroin. All of this could be done and an adequate supply of painkillers ensured not just for Western hospitals but also for a Third World where shortages are extreme and patients by the million live and die in agony because of it. The Senlis Council, a European think-tank, suggests that an opium licensing system could be used to divert the illegal drug trade into regulated sales of the poppy product for legitimate medicines. [continues 228 words]
KANDAHAR CITY, Afghanistan - She strides into a dingy hotel restaurant, a diminutive Canadian lawyer with hired guns following behind. One of her men is a burly Australian who packs an automatic rifle. He installs himself at the hotel's entrance, his weapon hidden but at the ready. It's not unusual for civilians in this dangerous city to protect themselves with private security. But rarely does a woman move about in such a manner -- commanding an armed guard and eschewing a burka, or even a shawl, for male Afghan clothes. [continues 1293 words]
Opium, Thugs Bloom Under U.S. Policies in Afghanistan War A little more than five years since the start of the Bush administration's Afghan war, the "ousted" Taliban is back in full flower, and so is the notorious Afghan poppy. There's no doubt the two are intimately connected. The Taliban, which briefly banned poppy cultivation in 2000 in an effort to gain U.S. diplomatic recognition and aid, now both supports and draws support from that profitable crop; Afghanistan provides 92 percent of the world's heroin. [continues 1485 words]
KANDAHAR - There has been much debate in Canada regarding the dramatic increase in violence in Kandahar, the southern Afghan province where Canadian troops are stationed. For two years, I have lived in Afghanistan performing research for the Senlis Council, a European think tank. During this time, I witnessed how the Taliban insurgency has been fuelled by forced poppy-crop eradication. This disastrous counter-narcotics policy has destroyed the livelihoods of impoverished farmers, and led to the disintegration of whole communities. Kandahar has suffered years of severe drought -- poppy is one of the rare crops that will grow in this harsh climate. Over 85% of the province's population relies on farming to survive. Without crops, families have become internal refugees. Their poverty has engendered severe disillusionment with the international community and is hindering NATO's mission of winning hearts and minds. [continues 480 words]
Jamilla Niazi is a 40-year-old woman with a freckly face and high cheekbones. When she arrives in a refugee camp in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan to speak to me via Internet camera phone, her features are hidden behind the blue burqa she is forced to wear in the scorching summer heat. She peels back the gauze and smiles. She doesn't do this much anymore -- not since the death threats began to come every night, pledging to burn her in acid. To jihadis, Niazi has committed an intolerable offense: She is the head teacher of a school for girls. "The Taliban have come back," says the aid worker with Niazi. "They control this area now." The night before our conversation, they burned down a school in nearby Nabili, and Taliban fighters planted a landmine in the playground of another girls school. [continues 605 words]
Jamilla Niazi is a 40-year-old woman with a freckly face and high cheekbones. When she arrives in a refugee camp in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan to speak to me via Internet camera phone, her features are hidden behind the blue burqa she is forced to wear in the scorching summer heat. She peels back the gauze and smiles. She doesn't do this much anymore - not since the death threats began to come every night, pledging to burn her in acid. To jihadis, Niazi has committed an intolerable offense: She is the head teacher of a school for girls. [continues 649 words]
More Afghan Farmers Will Turn to the Taliban If the U.S. Doesn't Stop Eradicating the Country's Poppy Crop. JAMILLA NIAZI is a 40-year-old woman with a freckly face and high cheekbones. When she arrives in a refugee camp in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan to speak to me via Internet camera phone, her features are hidden behind the blue burka she is forced to wear in the scorching summer heat. She peels back the gauze and smiles. She doesn't do this much anymore -- not since the death threats began to come every night, pledging to burn her in acid. To jihadis, Niazi has committed an intolerable offense: She is the head teacher of a school for girls. [continues 647 words]
Last Week in Ottawa There Was a Conference Outlining the Current Situation in Afghanistan. One of the primary reports was tabled by the independent Senlis Council headed by president-founder Norine MacDonald. For the past 14 months, MacDonald has lived and worked in the Kandahar region where her council has monitored the progress of international development efforts. Despite the obvious security risks, the Senlis team live among the Afghans and do not operate with military escorts. As such, they are one of the very few foreign agencies still providing an insight into this Taliban-infested hostile corner of Afghanistan. [continues 725 words]
Lawyer Norine Macdonald Argues That the Campaign to Eradicate Illegal Crops Is Devastating Farmers, Disillusioning Families and Playing Afghans into the Hands of the Taliban Saskatchewan-born lawyer Norine MacDonald has been in Afghanistan since January 2005 to conduct research for the Senlis Council, a security and development policy group. MacDonald, who founded the international think-tank in 2002, is now its president and lead field researcher. Based in Kandahar, MacDonald returns to Canada this week to take part in a Senlis Council symposium on Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. The symposium will discuss the steps that need to be taken to address both security and poverty in Afghanistan. It begins Tuesday in Ottawa at the Marriott Hotel. [continues 1495 words]
Canadian and United Nations experts are dismissing key elements of a report by an international think-tank that urges Canada to take the lead in developing new NATO strategies in Afghanistan such as legitimizing poppy production to meet Third World demands for painkillers. The Senlis Council report, originally released in June, was submitted to a symposium yesterday, where the Conference of Defence Associations dismissed its main recommendation as superficial and nonsensical. The paper by Norine MacDonald, the development and security think tank's lead field researcher in Kandahar province, says the military situation in southern Afghanistan has declined dramatically in recent months due largely to a failure to win the hearts and minds of the local populace. [continues 219 words]
Canada must immediately launch an emergency food program to relieve the growing hunger crisis in southern Afghanistan, says the president of an international development and security think-tank. Canadian lawyer Norine MacDonald, the founding president of the Senlis Council, told a news conference yesterday that a famine has started to take shape in the cities and towns that neighbour Canada's military base in Kandahar. "Children are starving to death literally down the road from the Canadian military base in Kandahar," said Ms. MacDonald, who has spent the past year in southern Afghanistan and has helped document the rise of refugee camps in Kandahar and in surrounding towns. [continues 673 words]
The Afghan government has ordered the closure of all offices of a group that wants to promote new ways of dealing with the global drugs problem. The Interior Ministry said the Senlis Council, had been "confusing farmers" and had been a factor in the increase in poppy cultivation. Senlis has suggested the legal use of Afghan opium for medical purposes. A spokesman for Senlis said it had not received any formal notification that its offices were to be closed. He denied its activities had increased poppy cultivation. [continues 58 words]
DRUGS AND TERROR: BRITAIN'S ROLE [] Tony Blair's ambition to eradicate opium production in Afghanistan has failed miserably. More poppies are grown than ever, financing the Taliban's resurgence and thus fuelling the war on terror. Britain is caught in a vicious circle in Helmand Province. Its ill-conceived war on drugs in Afghanistan may hand the Taliban a huge victory - the collapse of Nato. It was perhaps appropriate that Britain, as the biggest consumer of Afghan heroin, take on the role of "lead nation" in counter-narcotics in Afghanistan. But this has been prosecuted on the cheap while Nato has refused to back the poppy eradication schemes that the British government regards as critical to the success of the programme. Now the Taliban are making money hand over fist from drugs, ensuring that their forces remain well stocked with weapons. [continues 2294 words]
Canada has now flown 36 soldiers and one diplomat out of Afghanistan in caskets. There doubtless will be more bodies to be transported home in weeks and months to come, a notion that may carry heavy political ramifications for the Harper government as an election inevitably approaches. Conservatives, as a result of the mid-May vote they engineered in the Commons, bear full responsibility for extending the Canadian mission in Kandahar for an additional two years, to 2009. Most Canadians haven't access to the necessary information for a thorough analysis of the strategic imperatives behind the Afghan mission. [continues 623 words]
In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stressed the historic importance of the UN-sponsored intervention in Afghanistan. The rich have conspicuously come to the aid of the poor in the common interest. Calling it the UN's "greatest test," Mr. Harper said, "we cannot afford to fail." He then warned that "we haven't made Afghanistan's progress irreversible. Not yet." The gravest danger to this important project is that the foreign forces in Afghanistan come to be regarded not as saviours, but as invaders. One reason that this may happen has yet to receive proper attention. It lies in the aggressive poppy-eradication program promoted by the United States. [continues 722 words]
Drug Industry Supports The Insurgency, NATO General Warns Afghanistan's opium industry is thriving despite efforts to eradicate the crop and the expansion of poppy cultivation is concerning both NATO officials and critics of the mission who say it is necessary to end dependence on the drug crop to spur the country's redevelopment. A UN report states poppy cultivation will soar to record levels in Afghanistan this year, yielding 92% of the world's supply of opium. Cultivation has increased by 59% this year, reaching an output of 6,700 tonnes. [continues 297 words]
The Italian Red Cross and other organizations launched a campaign Monday to promote the idea of licensing Afghanistan's illegal opium production to make morphine. "This system we advocate provides for one part of the Afghan opium to be used to make legal morphine, rather than illegal heroin," Massimo Barra, president of the Italian Red Cross told reporters in Rome. The campaign seeks to promote trade agreements with Afghanistan and stems from a study released last year by The Senlis Council -- a European think-tank on drug policy -- that examined the potential for licensing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan to provide legal, opium-based painkillers. [continues 329 words]
Almost five years after a U.S.-led coalition attacked Afghanistan in response to the Sept. 11 attack, experts warn that the country is slipping away. The Islamic fundamentalist Taliban are back, controlling half the country, by some estimates. Fighting in the south is some of the fiercest that Western troops have faced in 50 years. Prospects for more help dimmed yesterday, as NATO nations failed to agree on calls by military commanders for 2,500 extra troops to help crush the growing Taliban-led insurgency. At least 50 people were killed yesterday in widespread violence across Afghanistan. [continues 769 words]
Regarding Public Editor Ted Vaden's Sept. 10 column "A conservative Locke on the paper?" no worries about The N&O seemingly leaning to the right. There are examples in every issue. Case in point: The Sept. 14 article "Control of Afghanistan slips." Of all the material available on the wire, the N&O decides to print a Cox News Service article citing [in part] experts from a European (French) think tank opining that the United States has lost control in Afghanistan. [continues 89 words]
A sharp spike in the illicit Afghan narcotics trade, despite major efforts by U.S. and Afghan forces over the past year, continues to fuel an insurgency that is increasingly killing American soldiers and destabilizing the country. In light of devastating figures expected to be announced Saturday by the United Nations, U.S. officials plan to urge a shift in policy that would involve getting tougher with regional Afghan officials who fail to meet new goals for destroying poppy fields in their areas, the Post-Dispatch has learned. [continues 1026 words]
America's drug tsar, John Walters, today acknowledged that US allies have voiced doubts about the wisdom of opium eradication in parts of southern Afghanistan where insurgents have killed 10 British troops over the past two months. Speaking during a visit to London for talks with British officials, Mr Walters recognised that the situation in Helmand province had been "difficult". In recent months, officials within the British government and military have privately expressed growing disquiet about the role of opium eradication in fuelling the Afghan insurgency. [continues 543 words]
Senior Conservative MPs are urging David Cameron to push for the licensing of legal opium farming in Afghanistan as he pays a surprise visit to the country today, Guardian Unlimited has learned. Opposition whip Tobias Ellwood said that the lives of British troops in the south of the country were being endangered because of the coalition's insistence on eradicating opium crops, which are often the sole means of livelihood for impoverished families in the region. Six British soldiers have died in Helmand province over the past six weeks, most in the former opium market town of Sangin where they are fighting a fierce insurgency of Taliban warlords who have gained the support of local farmers. [continues 758 words]
UK Org Says We're Losing Battle For Afghan Hearts And Minds With U.S.-Style Aggression Excerpted from Canada In Kandahar: No Peace To Keep, a report released last month by the London, UK-based Senlis Council, a security and development policy group. Canadian troops and Afghan civilians are paying with their lives for Canada's adherence to the U.S. government's failing military and counter-narcotics policies in Kandahar. There does not seem to be any learning process under way. Canadian troops have largely failed to assist in the reconstruction and economic development of the province. [continues 884 words]
U.S. Efforts, Supported By Canada, To Eradicate Afghanistan's Poppy Production Are Turning Farmers Against The Coalition. As A Result, According To One European Think-Tank, Canadian Soldiers' Lives Are At Greater Risk. Each morning by 4 a.m., Attah Mohammad is working his field, farming wheat or onions, depending on the season. At 10 a.m., he rests for an hour and a half, then returns to his two-acre farm for another 10 or 11 hours. Even after all those back-breaking hours, Mr. Mohammad, who is in his mid-fifties, can't be sure there'll be enough food to feed his wife or 11 children. Mr. Mohammad's wheat and onions bring him about 22 cents a kilogram. But where he lives, in Panshar, Afghanistan, the cash crop is poppies. The opium derived from poppies and destined for the illicit drug trade, is worth about $155 per kilogram to the farmers. [continues 1217 words]
The Senlis Council, a think tank devoted to global drug policy, recently issued a report condemning the Canadian military deployment in Afghanistan as "an impossible mission which can only lead to significant military casualties" because it supports impotent American policies in the region aimed at depressing the illegal opium trade. Prime Minister Harper responded by saying Canada is not directly enforcing poppy eradication programs, but that it supports such efforts and continues to advance "alternatives for agriculture." The premise of both the report and Harper's comments is that the US wants to eliminate the illegal opium trade in Afghanistan, which provides 87 per cent of the world's illegal opium, and this premise is wrong. [continues 500 words]
The UK mission in Afghanistan is in danger of failing because of "misguided" support for American military and drug-eradication policies, an international think-tank has claimed. Instead of taking part in the reconstruction of the country shattered by decades of war, British forces find themselves "at war" with a resurgent Taliban and alienated from an increasingly hostile population. The report came as Tony Blair led tributes in the Commons to the two special forces soldiers killed in Helmand on Tuesday. He said: "They were fighting the Taliban. They were brave and committed soldiers. This country can be very proud of the work they were doing." [continues 498 words]
Afghanistan Opium Poppy Report Pooh-Poohed By Politicians, Military Canadian politicians and military leaders are rejecting a British report suggesting both troops and Afghan civilians are being killed because of Canada's support of failing U.S. policies on elimination of the opium poppy crop. The poppy eradication campaign has driven rural farmers into such extreme poverty that they are shifting their support to the Taliban as the international community and the Afghan government fail to meet their basic needs, says the report by the London-based Senlis Council. [continues 353 words]
Failing U.S. Policies In Afghanistan Are Killing Canadians, British Report Says KANDAHAR -- Canadian troops and Afghan civilians are paying with their lives because of failing U.S. policies to erase the opium poppy crop, says a report by a British think-tank. The poppy eradication campaign has driven rural farmers into such extreme poverty that they are shifting their support to the Taliban because the international community and the Afghan government are not doing enough to meet their basic needs, says the report by the London-based Senlis Council. [continues 307 words]
Soldiers Dying For U.S. Drug Policy: European Report PM, Military Brass Lash Out At Claims From Think-Tank LONDON--The Canadian government is in denial over the true perception of its troop deployment to Afghanistan's troubled Kandahar province, says the head of a European drug policy think-tank. Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of the Brussels-based Senlis Council, said he was taken aback by the virulent reaction to the group's report, which said Canadian soldiers and Afghan civilians are paying with their lives because of failing U.S. policies that focus on eradication of the poppy crop [continues 528 words]
TORONTO -- Canadian politicians and military leaders are rejecting a British report suggesting both troops and Afghan civilians are being killed because of Canada's backing of failing U.S. policies on elimination of the opium poppy crop. The poppy eradication campaign has driven rural farmers into such extreme poverty that they are shifting their support to the Taliban as the international community and the Afghan government fail to meet their basic needs, says the report by the London-based Senlis Council. [continues 250 words]
Canada's Delicate Dance In Afghanistan While Canada's prime minister is committed to eradicating the opium industry in Afghanistan, the soldiers charged with the job are still trying to figure out how to do it without causing a bloodbath of innocent lives. "Narcotics are the curse of Afghanistan," said Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, the head of Canada's army. "It's a hugely complicated problem and I don't have a solution right now." After serving in Afghanistan in 2003 and seeing the drug activity first-hand, Leslie said villagers are forced to grow poppies under the threat of death from warlords. [continues 358 words]
What A Deadly Harvest. As British troops move in to replace Americans in some of the most volatile parts of southern Afghanistan, their valiant battle for democracy is being undermined by their own Government's confused war on opium. Yesterday the Senlis Council, an international security and development policy think-tank, cautioned that the southern states are slipping into a "state of war". Afghans, faced with overwhelming poverty caused by the West's obliteration of their poppy crops, are switching allegiance to the Taleban and other insurgents. You cannot attack poppies and insurgents at the same time. Attacks on one breed the other. [continues 849 words]
KABUL: The upper house of Afghan parliament wants a London-based group pushing for the legalisation of Afghanistan's huge opium crop to leave the country, the counternarcotics ministry said Saturday. A meeting of the upper house last week decided the Senlis Council "should stop their activities in Afghanistan and leave this country," the ministry said in a statement. The international think-tank has been pushing for Afghanistan to legalise its opium crop, which supplies up to 90 percent of the heroin used in Europe, saying crop eradication will never work. The group says opium production should be licenced and the crop used to make legal painkillers for developing countries, which it says have a growing demand for these drugs. [continues 213 words]
Afghanistan Drug Trade: Farmers Say They Won't Grow Flower Next Year - -- If They Can Keep Current Crop KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A large number of Afghan poppy farmers have handed Canadian soldiers an unusual offer, pledging not to grow the illicit flowers next year if they are allowed to harvest their poppy crop this year with no interference from Afghan officials intent on smashing the country's opium trade. More than 15 village elders, representing hundreds of local farmers, recently made the plea to soldiers at Canada's remote firebase near the town of Gombad, in the rugged countryside north of Kandahar. [continues 840 words]
Think-Tank Opposes Eradication Policy -- Plants Can Be Used For Other Painkillers -- Bid To Kill Opium Trade Is Futile, Think-Tank Argues Let Afghans Help Ease Shortage Of Painkilling Drugs The attempt to eradicate Afghanistan's opium poppy crop is ineffective and destructive, and should be abandoned, says an international security and development policy think-tank. Afghan farmers should be encouraged to grow the plants for production of morphine, codeine and other opium-derived painkillers in critically short supply around the world, the Paris-based Senlis Council says. [continues 308 words]
Last month, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on Afghanistan that could pave the way for a new and more open-minded approach to counternarcotics strategies worldwide. In fact, the resolution called on the participants at a conference of donors, which took place in London at the end of January, "to take into consideration the proposal of licensed production of opium for medical purposes, as already granted to a number of countries." This proposal was originally made by the Senlis Council, an independent organization based in Paris, during a workshop in Kabul last September. The text introduced by the European Liberal Democrats, with the support of virtually all political groups in the European Parliament, is revolutionary, not only because it goes against conventional thinking, but also because it raises the issue above the stagnant reality of the "war on drugs." In Afghanistan, that so-called war has essentially been based on eradication campaigns and alternative livelihood projects, which have achieved only scant results. [continues 750 words]
This month, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on Afghanistan that could pave the way for a new and more open-minded approach to counter-narcotics strategies worldwide. In fact, the resolution calls on the participants at a conference of donors, to take place in London at the end of January, "to take into consideration the proposal of licensed production of opium for medical purposes, as already granted to a number of countries." This proposal was originally made by the Senlis Council, an independent organization based in Paris, during a workshop in Kabul last September. The text introduced by the European Liberal Democrats, with the support of virtually all political groups in the European Parliament, is revolutionary, not only because it goes against conventional thinking, but also because it raises the issue above the stagnant reality of the "war on drugs." In Afghanistan, that so-called war has essentially been based on eradication campaigns and alternative livelihood projects, which have achieved only scant results. [continues 759 words]
Before Being Killed By A Suicide Bomber, Daniel Werb Reports, Glyn Berry Was Part Of A Scheme To Help A Minor Nation Kick A Major Habit Early in the 11th century, the master Afghan doctor Avicenna, one of the fathers of modern medicine, praised opium as the most potent of all pain relievers. Yet, a thousand years later, the same drug, coupled with resurgent terrorism, has his homeland in agony. Opium and insurgency both played a role in the suicide bombing of a Canadian patrol on the outskirts of Kandahar this week that left diplomat Glyn Berry dead and three soldiers travelling with him severely injured. [continues 2979 words]
A recent UN report on drugs in Afghanistan points to the success of eradication in decreasing the area under poppy cultivation by 21 percent during the past year. Yet this positive development is fragile and likely unsustainable. Instead of doctrinally clinging to eradication, the international community should explore other means of decreasing Afghanistan's illicit economy, such as converting the still vast opium cultivation into legal production for medical opiates. The idea of transforming the cultivation for the production of codeine and morphine is promoted by the Senlis Council, a European drug policy think tank. Pointing to the successful implementation of such a scheme in Turkey, where it eliminated the large illegal cultivation of opium, the Senlis advocates ask: Why not Afghanistan? [continues 634 words]
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. [continues 525 words]
Will our troops get mired in Colombian-style combat over poppies? Afghanistan - Besides worries that Canada will be saddled with the Bush admin's bad human rights rap in Afghanistan, there are now concerns that our forces could end up smack in the middle of a Colombian-style drug war. Observers fear that the U.S., which has been somewhat restrained until this point for strategic reasons, is stepping up pressure for eradication of the purple and pink poppy fields. And they predict that Canada's approximately 1,000 troops in Kandahar will suddenly find themselves mired in a full-scale shootout, not just with al Qaeda forces but with opium gangs. [continues 1114 words]
A visit to Kabul, Afghanistan for a drug policy conference reconfirmed former mayor Philip Owen's support for Vancouver's Four Pillars approach. Owen, who was invited to speak at the late September event organized by the Senlis Council, a European-based drug policy think tank formed in 2002, said many countries present supported or were interested in Vancouver's policies. "I guess you wonder, is Vancouver wrong in what it initiated? No. Would Vancouver do it again? Yes," he said. "You come back with confidence that you're on the right side of the page with the world community-you understand what they're doing and they understand what you're doing. Vancouver is on the map." [continues 581 words]
Afghan farmers prevented from growing poppies under a British-led eradication programme have been forced to hand over their daughters to drug traffickers to settle their debts, according to reports from Afghanistan. The claim is the latest in a series to dog the British effort to curb Afghanistan's opium industry. Opium dominates Afghanistan's economy, accounting for 60 per cent of its income. Critics say the country is turning into a narco-state under the noses of Nato peacekeeping forces, and of the Western governments involved in reconstruction. [continues 601 words]
OTTAWA - A Canadian senator who led a special committee on illegal drugs says Afghanistan should legalize the production of opium for medical use. Senator Pierre Nolin told an international conference in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, that such a policy would curb illegal opium production and help supply a legitimate medical need. "Adopting such a public policy would kill two birds with one stone," a news release quotes Nolin as telling the Senlis Council, an international drug policy think-tank. The council recently produced a feasibility study supporting the legal production of medical opiates in Afghanistan. Nolin said only Australia, France, Spain, India and Turkey are legally allowed to produce opium, but the International Narcotics Control Board has reported a shortage of medical opiates. [end]
Opium-Farm Licensing Under Consideration The world's biggest producer of opium and its derivative, heroin, acknowledged Monday that it has considered licensing its vast illicit crop and using it to produce opium-based medicines, though it ruled out such a move in the immediate future. The Afghan government said it welcomed the release Monday of a feasibility study about the subject by a European-based drug policy research organization, the Senlis Council. But Afghanistan's counternarcotics minister, Habibullah Qaderi, ruled out adopting such a program until security conditions in the country improve. [end]
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Afghanistan could reduce its destabilizing heroin trade by licensing an opium crop to produce medical morphine for export, a drug policy group said Monday. But the United Nations dismissed the idea as unlikely to work and the government called it premature. The Senlis Council, a France-based group founded in 2002, released results of a study examining the potential for licensing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, which produces an estimated 87 percent of the world's supply of both opium and its derivative, heroin. [continues 297 words]
Afghanistan's Government and the United Nations (UN) have rejected a call for the legalisation of the country's opium crops. Afghanistan produces 87 per cent of the world's opium. A Paris-based group of experts known as the Senlis Council called for the urgent legalisation of Afghanistan's opium industry to turn the impoverished country away from the illegal heroin trade and towards supplying the legal pain relief industry. The report cited countries, including Australia, that it said also licences opium production for use in the manufacture of codeine and morphine, which are in critically short supply around the world. Afghanistan's Government said it rejected the proposal for the time being, stating that the poor security situation in the country means that an illicit trade geared towards the heroin market would still flourish. [end]
Twenty years before the war on terror, we had a war on drugs. The Reagan administration came up with the idea, the Thatcher government backed it. It was, for a time, one of the most important initiatives the US and UK were involved in. By the 1990s, when I spent a lot of time in Colombia and Peru, the main centres for growing coca for cocaine, it was clear the war on drugs had been comprehensively lost. At first, if you suggested that to officials in Washington or London, they would question your motives: you must be anti-American, or biased against the prime minister of the day. [continues 801 words]
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan could reduce its destabilizing heroin trade by licensing an opium crop to produce medical morphine for export, a drug policy group said Monday, but the United Nations dismissed the idea as unlikely to work and the government called it premature. The Senlis Council, a France-based group founded in 2002, released results of a study examining the potential for licensing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan - which produces an estimated 87 percent of the world's supply of both opium and its derivative, heroin. [continues 442 words]
Muddled Thinking Over Drug Use In Prisons Will Help The Criminals Is there anyone in either the Dail or the Seannad with the courage and imagination of British Liberal Democrat Chris Davies? The Welsh MEP raised a row in the UK when he suggested that perhaps it was time to rethink the Western world's policy on drugs. Davies put forward the idea long advocated by libertarians that legalising all narcotics would drastically slash the profits of drug smugglers and dealers while reducing crime rates caused by addicts prepared to pay astronomical prices for their fix. [continues 738 words]
