From Times Online:
For Western governments exasperated by their failure to curb the Afghan drugs trade there are two tempting solutions gaining credence in some circles: buy it or legalise it.
When the US-led invasion toppled the Taleban Government eight years ago, Afghanistan's opium production was virtually zero because the clerics had largely eradicated poppy cultivation. Last year Afghanistan produced 7,700 tonnes of opium - worth about $2.9 billion (£2 billion) - accounting for 90 per cent of the world's illegal supply.
The US alone spends $1 billion a year in Afghanistan on a counter-narcotics strategy that Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to the region, calls “the single most ineffective policy in the history of American foreign policy”. Britain, for its part, spent £2.5 billion last year on military operations against a Taleban insurgency inextricably linked to the drugs trade.
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My Comment: Buy it .... or pay the farmers of opium to grow fruits and vegetables .... and pay them more. The money that the farmers make from opium is negligible .... starvation wages. The ones who make the money are the ones who process the opium, and the exporters.
Cut them out ... and cut the other vermin who profit from this.