The United States should buy Afghanistan's poppy crop instead of trying to eradicate it. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

The United States should buy Afghanistan's poppy crop instead of trying to eradicate it. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine: "The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime tells us that last year Afghanistan's poppy fields, on 193,000 hectares of land, produced 93 percent of all the world's opium. The potential production could be as high as 8,200 metric tons. And, unsurprisingly, UNODC also reports that the vast bulk of the revenue from this astonishing harvest goes directly to the Taliban or to local warlords and mullahs. Meanwhile, in the guise of liberators, NATO forces appear and tell the Afghan villagers that they intend to burn their only crop."

Wahey! Christopher has joined his voice to the Senlis Council, Afghan Red Crescent, Italian Red Cross, European Green Party and Green Party of England and Wales who are all backing this eminently rational and sensible policy. The Governments objection to buying the crop is : "Some of it might leak onto the Black Market". Even my cat noticed the flaw in this threadbare argument.