Hitch

Christopher Hitchens on Afghanistan, the poppy crop and the War on Drugs:

In order to comprehend this point, there is no need to know much about Afghanistan. Do you know anyone who really believes in the "war on drugs" as it is supposedly waged in the United States? It is widely understood to be the main index of pointless and costly and unjust incarceration, a huge source of corruption in police departments, and a cause of crime in its own right as well as a source of tainted and "cut" narcotics. And that is before you even consider absurdities and cruelties like the denial of medical marijuana, or the diversion of personnel and resources from the war against more threatening gangsters. Our entire state policy, at home and abroad, is devoted not to stopping a trade that actually grows every year, but rather to ensuring that all its profitable means of production, distribution, and exchange remain the fiefdom of criminal elements. We consciously deny ourselves access to properly refined and labeled products and to the vast revenue that could accrue to the Treasury instead of to the mobsters here and overseas.

Point taken. The War on Drugs has proven to be a farce and should be re-examined in great detail. I don't do drugs but have no misconception that if I wanted to find any drug it wouldn't be very hard. The costs associated with this so-called war is unimaginable and, most likely, not accountable. The solution is something more toward treatment and education as opposed to eradication of the drug at its source. Eradication is impossible if the demand exists; poor populations will continue to grow coca or poppies as long as Americans, Europeans and Asians demand the temporary high that these narcotics bring.

I suggest legalization of marijuana--with taxation--and utilizing the revenue to fund major treatment programs that may actually work, not underfunded, half-hearted attempts at treatment that we currently are subsidizing.