U.S. POPPY STRATEGY ILL-ADVISED, CRITICS SAY

WASHINGTON - The United States released a strategy Thursday in its
efforts to fight the widespread poppy production in Afghanistan
that's fuelling the Taliban and frustrating efforts to quell violence.

The program will increase rewards for cutting out crops of poppies,
the source of opium and related drugs, and planting alternatives.
Those who don' t will face stiffer penalties.

"We know that opium, maybe second only to terror, is a huge threat to
the future of Afghanistan," said anti-drug czar John Walters, who
heads the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"The poor people of Aghanistan are not getting rich off opium," he
said. 'This is not a future . that offers the opportunity to develop
schools and health care and security. It's drug mafias. It supports
warlord(s). It supports terror."

The plan includes giving up to US$60 million more in development aid
to local Afghan officials to bolster anti-poppy efforts.

Afghanistan now accounts for more than 90 per cent of the world's
total crop, up from 70 per cent in 2000 and 52 per cent a decade earlier.

The United States is already spending some $420 million to curb poppy
crops and has succeeded in eliminating it in some areas while failing
to decrease total production.

Provincial governors who meet goals to reduce poppy crops will get
more schools and roads while Afghanistan's central criminal tribunal
will get more resources to prosecute those who don't comply.

"We want to make sure that there are greater rewards for success and
greater consequences for failure," said State Department anti-drug
official Tom Schweich.

Canada has pledged C$57 million to fund the country's
counter-narcotics efforts, including an $18.5-million program to
promote alternative jobs in the volatile Kandahar province where
Canadian troops are stationed.

But critics say the so-called "enhanced carrot and stick approach"
announced Thursday is only more of the same tactic that's failed in
every country it's been tried.

"As long as there is a demand for drugs, there will be a supply to
meet it," said Bill Piper at the Drug Policy Alliance. "Drug
prohibition makes plants more valuable than gold."

The alliance noted that a recent report from the State Department's
inspector general was critical of eradication goals, saying an
assessment team "found no realistic possiblity of outspending
economic incentives in the narcotics industry."

Meantime, critics say, the practice is alienating citizens from the
government and pushing them toward the Taliban.

Some U.S. legislators have proposed alternatives, such as licensing
farmers to grow opium for legal pain medications or having the United
States buy opium crops from farmers and then destroying them.