Replies

1. 
   xJohn_Sprung | Nov 21, 2001 11:25pm | #1

   *
   OK, the whole drug thing:

   The Brits have it solved. Make the drugs legal with a doctor's prescription. Doctors keep their addicted patients on maintenance doses. Supply and demand dumps drug prices to appropriate levels for a normal legal product. With no huge financial incentive, there is no more drug crime.

   -- J.S.

1. 
   Tesaje_ | Nov 21, 2001 11:32pm | #2

   *Interesting. That's the first I'd herd the Taliban had stopped the opium trade. The papers had been saying the Taliban got a good deal of its income from the opium trade.The fields must be incredibly beautiful when in bloom. Poppys are georgous. It's hard to really know what to do about the illegal drug trade. Opium is also the source for legal morphium. If we didn"t have to many abusersAs far as the Taliban goes, as soon as it suited them, they would have reversed their policy. The Afghan people still lose under the Taliban. I read the drug traffickers had a really hard time after 9/11 becuase the borders were shut down so tight.Mary

1. 
   Tom_Carter | Nov 22, 2001 02:29am | #3

   *Drugs are simnply the commerce of a certain part of the third world. If the demand for the derivative products of poppies were reduced in Europe and--especially-America, then the raw product would lose value. So--we're doing it to ourselves, right?Tom

1. 
   Luka_ | Nov 22, 2001 02:43am | #4

   *If the drugs were legalized, regulated and taxed like cigarettes are, the price would go down, and the raw product would lose value that way as well.

1. 
   rob.kelly | Nov 22, 2001 03:03am | #5

   *We (USA) gave the Taliban $43 million in cash earlier this year to compensate them for lost Opium income. Of course, that money never got to the farmers.

2. 
   Luka_ | Nov 22, 2001 05:01am | #6

   *No, it went into the WTC and pentagon crashes.

3. 
   Tesaje_ | Nov 22, 2001 09:25pm | #7

   *Probably so. It really makes you think our old policy of supporting human rights abusing regimes because it is in our strategic interest is probably bad foreign policy in the long run.Mary

4. 
   Mike_Smith | Nov 22, 2001 10:04pm | #8

   *amen, mary, if it doesn't fit our own ideals, why should we support it ?...how to seperate our economic needs from our constitutional ideals... what a quandry

5. 
   Mike_Gabriel | Nov 23, 2001 05:04pm | #9

   *Not to mention the "war(waste of money) on drugs"...don't spend $43m tightening up the borders to stop smuggling whatever ya do, just bribe the Taliban to cut production. As if someone else won't just pick up the slack in the market!! "cut worldwide opium/heroin production 75%" sounds good at the press conference though...

2. 
   SandraM | Nov 23, 2001 05:04pm | #10

   *
   Guess who the happiest people in Afghanistan are these days....

   http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=105967

   Comments, anyone?