FOLLOW EUROPEAN MODEL ON DRUG REFORM

One of the many challenges facing a post-Taliban coalition government is
the corrupting influence of drug trafficking.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the raw material used
to make heroin. According to the State Department, both the Taliban and the
Northern Alliance have financed their activities by taxing the opium trade.
A recent State Department report blames the Afghan drug trade for increased
levels of global terrorism and notes that the production of opium
"undermines the rule of law by generating large amounts of cash,
contributing to regional money-laundering and official corruption."

Paradoxically, Afghanistan's brutal Taliban regime was able to reap obscene
profits from the heroin trade because of drug prohibition, not in spite of
it. The same lesson, unfortunately, applies here at home.

Just as alcohol prohibition did in the early 1900s, the modern-day drug war
subsidizes organized crime. Marijuana, an easily grown weed, is literally
worth its weight in gold in U.S. cities. In Colombia, the various armed
factions waging civil war are financially dependent on America's drug war.
The illicit trade keeps prices high and a cartel reaps the profits. While
U.S. politicians ignore the historical precedent of alcohol prohibition,
Europeans are instituting harm reduction, a public health alternative that
seeks to minimize the damage associated with both drug use and drug
prohibition.

There is a middle ground between drug prohibition and legalization. On the
cutting edge of harm reduction, Switzerland's heroin maintenance trials
have been shown to reduce drug-related disease, death and crime among
chronic addicts. Modeled after U.S. methadone-maintenance programs
pioneered in New York, the trials are being replicated in Germany, Spain
and the Netherlands.

In England, where more than 90 percent of heroin comes from Afghanistan,
the Association of Chief Police Officers is hoping to break the link
between heroin and crime by re-instituting heroin maintenance. The practice
of prescribing heroin to addicts was standard in England from the 1920s to
the 1960s. In response to U.S. pressure, prescription heroin maintenance
was discontinued in 1971. The loss of a controlled distribution system and
subsequent creation of an unregulated illicit market led the number of
heroin addicts to skyrocket from fewer than 2,000 in 1970 to roughly 50,000
today. England's top cops say the drug war is part of the problem. A spike
in street prices leads desperate heroin addicts to increase criminal
activity to feed their habits. The drug war fuels crime.

Acknowledging the social reality of marijuana use, pragmatic Swiss
policymakers argue that taking control of the most popular illicit drug out
of the hands of organized crime will reduce exposure to heroin and other
hard drugs.

If Afghanistan is to rebuild a civil society without the corrupting
influence of drug trafficking, the United States needs to adopt a
laissez-faire approach to harm reduction like that in Europe.