TIME TO STOP THE HYPOCRISY ON THE DRUG TRADE AND LOOK THE OTHER WAY

The debate on the revival of drug cultivation in the impoverished
Baalbek-Hermel area has exposed the hypocrisy of all the parties
concerned.

There is, first, the hypocrisy of Hizbullah, whose Ammar Musawi
deployed splendid duplicity on Tuesday to both defend drug
cultivation while also insisting it was a problem. The party has had
a mixed record in the Bekaa in the past few years, and does not want
to lose its drug-cultivating electorate as it did the followers of
Sheikh Sobhi Toufeili.

The drug debate has also been useful in exposing how counterfeit
Hizbullah's reputation for being above the sordidness of politics is.
As the Middle East Airlines imbroglio revealed, or the recent dispute
between Hizbullah and Prime Minister Rafik Hariri over illegal
international phone lines, the party has been as adept at working the
ropes of political patronage as anybody else.

The government has also been hypocritical on the drug question, since
neither it nor its predecessors has done anything in the past six
years to prevent a return to drug cultivation. For almost a decade,
the authorities have simply ignored the agricultural sector,
preferring to put their money into services, thus helping push
farmers in the Baalbek and Hermel to the edge.

Today, instead of facing this fact, the government prefers to whine
that Lebanon is a victim, since promised international aid to
introduce alternative crops never materialized. This is only partly
true. The sums promised by foreign countries were always much lower
than what Lebanon expected. Still, one can regale oneself watching
Hizbullah officials also complain of the money that never came, since
one of the prospective donor states was the US.

Then there is the silence surrounding those benefiting from the drug
trade. Drug cultivation is more than the penniless farmer eking out a
living on a dry patch of northern Bekaa land. Indeed farmers are the
weakest links in the drug production edifice, which is controlled by
networks of smugglers who, one supposes, must provide a cut to those
institutions responsible for security in the Baalbek-Hermel area. In
this respect, Hizbullah has some explaining to do.

Yet is there really a problem here? Certainly Rafik Hariri has no
interest in being branded the prime minister of a Levantine Colombia.
He is aware that this would only harm his reconstruction efforts,
since foreign funding will soon come with conditions attached to
enforce drug eradication programs. But what if Hariri adopts a more
sanguine view, pretending to do something while doing nothing?

The debate on legalizing drugs is a long and fascinating one, though
this is hardly the place to develop it. There are those - present
writer included - who believe that it is no business of governments
to tell people what they can and cannot ingest, or what pleasures
they can and cannot enjoy. The philosophical foundations of this view
are, essentially, libertarian. Individual human liberty is seen as
paramount, on condition that oneís actions do not harm others.

Yet there are also arguments in favor of legalization that use other
criteria. Eradicating drug use is both costly and futile. Better to
legalize drugs, many submit, so that supply can increase and prices
can tumble. Those who would pay the highest price for this collapse,
so to speak, are those drug-supply networks that are also the most
responsible for the violence surrounding the drug trade.

While nobody expects the Lebanese authorities to legalize drug
production, it is time to look the other way. Lebanon can only
benefit financially from surreptitious production. Hizbullah would be
happy because the party elders could claim they saved farmers from
starvation. And those networks living off the drug trade would be
happy since they would only rarely have to submit to interference
from bored policemen ordered to burn hashish fields before television
cameras.

This is a plea for what could already be taking place today. The
vested interests involved in the drug trade are too powerful for an
effective eradication program. Hariri is still enough of a
free-marketer to appreciate that it is up to Western countries to
control their demand before Lebanon can be fairly targeted as a
supplier. And some money for the Baalbek-Hermel area would be useful
in preventing the natives there from getting restless, and becoming
over-reliant on Hizbullahís largesse.

This may all sound a trifle cynical. It should not, since the
alternative is more hypocrisy. There is no real drug problem in
Lebanon. There is, simply, supply and demand and the opportunity for
quite a few people to make profits at a time when the economy is
preparing to keel over. Some may be morally uncomfortable with this.
But since when have drugs been a moral problem?

Michael Young writes a weekly commentary for The Daily Star