AFGHANISTAN DRUG PROBLEM NOT THAT EASY TO SOLVE

Simple policy analysis leads, of course, to simple solutions that very
rarely succeed. Scott Taylor - in between making gratuitous remarks
about Canadian military officers - offers to the public just such a
simplistic suggestion for redressing the poppy/narcotics problem in
Afghanistan (Oct. 30 column).

He recommends that "we" should buy the poppy harvest directly from the
farmers, thereby eliminating the drug trade, cutting the warlords out
of the market and lessening their influence, and enriching the
farmers. Everybody wins.

Unfortunately, the problem is more complex, and Mr. Taylor's
"solution" would likely cause more problems and violence in the
country and elsewhere. The flaw in his "free enterprise"solution and
in the "eradication" solution now in place is that both are based on
the erroneous notion that we are dealing with a supply problem - the
production of opium made available to a market.

In fact, we are dealing with a demand problem. It is the demand for
illegal drugs in North America, Europe, Russia and Asia that
stimulates the cultivation and production of drugs in Columbia,
Africa, Afghanistan and, indeed, in marijuana grow-ops in Canada.

Basic economic theory and reality suggest that were we to enter the
drug market, we would stimulate a bidding war with other buyers - the
warlords - and encourage more farmers to enter the business because
the demand and price would increase. We would also increase the
violence in the area as buyers in an already unregulated marketplace
attacked each other and the farmers as they tried to control prices
and market share - see Chicago, circa 1920. Our buyers would be the
first on the hit list.

Arguably, the conflict would spread to other growing areas outside
Afghanistan, some of which are legitimate, as Mr. Taylor's so-called
free enterprise system began to distort the market worldwide.

And what would Mr. Taylor do with the drugs he bought, inflating
prices and booming production? To throw the drugs on the legal
medicine-opiate market, for instance, would drive the price for legal
growers through the floor, or would Mr. Taylor provide support
payments for them too? Which farmers would be allowed into the new
system - only those now in operation? Why not everyone who wants in,
as required by "free enterprise" concepts?

Removing illegal drugs from the illegal, drug-user marketplace would
create a medical and police emergency across the world as the
availability of drugs fell and the price rose. Or should we simply buy
the drugs at market prices and then distribute them freely about our
streets? And why would the warlords disappear from the market when
prices go up? Rather, the incentive to get into the business would
surely increase.

Mr. Taylor explains, simplistically, that "poppy pickers are the
highest paid agricultural workers of central Asia" because, in his
opinion, the job is difficult and critical. But this is, of course, a
second order explanation. These workers are highly paid and their
bosses make lots of money because the demand for their product is high
and the source is controlled by illegal and violent means.
Substituting another buyer would not change the poppy pickers'
situation, but it might make them richer.

Canadians and international policy makers ought to beware of crude,
ill-informed suggestions, especially when they are made in part to
attack unfairly people who are trying to deal with a serious, complex
problem. Moreover, policy suggestions that are based on faulty
notions, in this case confusing a demand problem for a supply problem,
may only exacerbate the difficulties we and the Afghans face.

Eradication strategies, free-enterprise strategies, and crop-exchange
policies will not on their own eliminate the Afghan illicit drug
market unless they are combined with strategies to eliminate the
demand for drugs from outside the country. As "Plan Colombia"
illustrates, the prospects for combining supply and demand policies
successfully are not good.

Finally, Canada did not deploy the Canadian Forces to Afghanistan to
solve the country's drug problem, although redressing it may be part
of the Afghan national development strategy. Using this non-mission,
therefore, as a whipping-boy to attack the integrity of Canadian
officers and soldiers and officials is as dishonest as Mr. Taylor's
analysis is simplistic and unhelpful.