WAGING WAR AGAINST OPIUM IN AFGHANISTAN WON'T WORK

We can't even eradicate marijuana cultivation in our own country, and
Robert Weiner and Jeffrey Buchanan expect us to wipe out opium-poppy
production in Afghanistan, where people's lives depend on its
production. That has no chance of working.

Eradication is the least effective method of drug control possible.
When one growing area is destroyed, another area is planted, or
production moves to another country, corrupting that nation with narco
dollars.

Supply and demand guarantees that opium poppies will be grown
somewhere to satisfy the demand. The drug-crop farmers are the poorest
people on Earth, and the only way to stop them from growing these
crops is to take the profit potential out of growing illicit drugs. We
can do this by controlling drug sales to users and eliminating the
black-market street sales. That's the only way we can win the drug war
in Afghanistan or anywhere else.

KIM HANNA, Worcester, Mass.