THE DRUGS DON'T WORK

The deaths of three British soldiers at the end of last week have
brought the total number of British soldiers killed in combat in
Afghanistan since 2001 to 50. The struggle to rebuild the economy at
the same time as protecting the peace is making Afghanistan, for the
military, as dangerous as Iraq. It would be facile to suggest that
there is an easy route out of the opposition the Nato forces are
encountering. But destroying the Afghan poppy crop - now the main
livelihood of whole communities - while trying to win the hearts and
minds of the people appears to be increasingly incompatible with the
real purpose of the mission of permanently defeating the Taliban. Not
for the first time, a "war on drugs" has done much harm.

In Afghanistan, where economic chaos and the collapse of the cotton
market followed the eviction of the Taliban from Kabul, farmers found
poppy-growing the surest way of making a living. Something approaching
half of the whole Afghan economy is now attributed to the opium trade,
while the country is the source of 90% of the world's production, and
of most of the opium that finds its way on to British streets. Of
course the war on drugs recognises that farmers need an alternative,
but the laws of the free market operating in an environment of static
demand and diminishing supply make it more or less impossible to
compete with the rising price of opium. British soldiers are now
focused more on disrupting the drug runners' routes than applying
industrial-strength weedkiller to the poppy crop. But with the start
of the new growing season in October, the destruction of the crop will
continue. Meanwhile, from past experience, supply - this being a
global business - will simply relocate.

There is an alternative. It is pioneered by the Senlis Council, a
counter-narcotics thinktank, which launches a new campaign this month
to win support for the licensing of the poppy crop and the legal
manufacture of morphine. It proposes village-level production to make
a "fair trade" version of the drug that would at last put the pain
relief the west takes for granted within reach of doctors and patients
in the developing world. At the same time it would provide local jobs
and a boost to local economies.

The Senlis Council has the funding for a pilot project. It is ready to
go. The official line is that there is insufficient stability for it
to work in Afghanistan. But the thinktank believes it is garnering
support. A licensing scheme for opium production in Turkey has worked
for 30 years. A trial in Afghanistan could test its potential. But it
would need a change of tone from America, whose commitment to the war
on drugs looks more and more like a dangerous rhetorical flourish that
British troops can ill afford.