CAN'T BE DONE

Re: "Kill the poppies," Letter, May 3.

Norman Borecki says the UN should kill all the poppies. However,
killing all of them is impossible. At best, they can't even get 20 per
cent of them. This policy of partial eradication is the very thing
that makes the crop so lucrative. The solution is to a buy all the
opium and use it for medicine. Then the Taliban and other assorted bad
guys in the area will have no revenue stream to draw from. Here at
home and abroad, the math is the same -- continually criminalizing
crops plays right into the bad guys' hands. The problem with that
policy is that the value of Turkey's and Australia's legal opium
plantations would drop. So really, our soldiers are dying in
Afghanistan to protect the legal opium production of other countries.

Russell Barth, Nepean, Ont.