Source Suppression as an anti-drug strategy

Pubdate: Thu, 15 Feb 2007
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2007 The Province
Contact: provletters@png.canwest.com
Website: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476

ANTI-DRUG POLICIES NEED OVERHAULING
LONDON -- Counter-narcotics policies in Afghanistan need to beurgently overhauled before they push the people of southernAfghanistan into the arms of the Taliban insurgency, a security thinktank said yesterday.
A poppy-eradication program that began last month has already sparkeda new wave of violence, said Norine MacDonald, president of the SenlisCouncil, a European security think tank. She said the program wascosting NATO the popular support it needed to counter a loomingTaliban offensive

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Suppression of drug sources has been a fool's errand everytime it has been tried.

When WWII cut the US off from its traditional opium sources in Turkey, Mexico quickly stepped in to make up the slack. After the war, Turkey resumed production and reminants of the Nationalist Chinese Army turned Southeast Asia into the Golden Triangle of opium production.

When the US adopted source suppression as a strategy and forced Turkish farmers out of the business, Afghanistan quickly stepped in.

Even if Southeast Asia, Afghansitan, Turkey (now back in business), Mexico, and Colombia, which wanted and took its share of the opium trade, were eliminated from the opium market; legal supplies for morphine, etc. in Australia, India, Spain, France, and Eastern Europe would be swiftly diverted. The US (both sides) even grew its own opium during the Civil War, and the opium poppy is the state flower of California.

Today, only about hald of the crop land planted in opium in 1900 is used for opium production today.

Even if opium production totally ceased, completely synthetic opioids like methadone and fentanyl are available to take its place.

The US has been unable to stop, or even limit, cocaine growth in the Andean regions; and if it did manage to do so, cocaine as historically been grown commercially in Indonesia, Malasia, and Hawaii.

Source suppression doesn't work. Any modification of drug-using behavior has to come on the demand side.