INTERIOR MINISTER TAKES AIM AT ILLICIT DRUG CROP

Proposed Slogan: 'Plant to Eat, Not to Kill'

'Our decision is firm ...We will not allow the harvesting of poisons'

For the sake of Lebanon and its children, do not plant drugs, Interior
Minister Elias Murr advised farmers a few weeks before what could be
the start of a new drug planting season.

"We will carry on with our war on drug cultivation, the war between
good and evil, and we will not stop nor compromise until what is right
wins over what is wrong," Murr said Tuesday, during a workshop held
under his patronage at UNESCO on ways to fight drug
cultivation.

Addressing dozens of municipal officials and mukhtars from the Bekaa
area, the main location for cannibas harvesting, Murr said that local
authorities had an essential role in orienting farmers and keeping
them away from illegal drug harvesting, particularly at the start of
the season.

"Let the farmers' slogan be: 'plant to eat, not to kill,'" Murr told
his audience.

He argued that if the local figures did not help in this campaign,
farmers would have to pay the price when the Internal Security Forces
arrest them and destroy their drug crops. "Cultivating drugs is a
crime, and we should all cooperate, utilizing all available means and
capabilities, to help those farmers stay away from this plague," he
said.

Murr cited official figures from last year's campaign against drug
harvesting and dealing, stating that more than 2,000 drug dealers were
arrested and some 120 million square meters of drug crops destroyed.

"Our choice is clear and our decision is firm. We will not allow the
harvesting of poisons. We will not permit the country's youth and
society to be destroyed, and we will not allow anyone to harm the
country's reputation," he said.

Murr stressed the shared responsibility of the government, municipal
councils, mukhtars, land owners, civil society, and nongovernmental
organizations in the fight against drug harvesting.

He urged donor countries to fulfill their commitments and support
substitute crops in Lebanon as implemented in other drug harvesting
nations. The effort to stimulate the cultivation of alternative crops
has largely floundered, according to many observers. Murr added that
the support of substitute crops was "a lot cheaper" than chasing drug
dealers and rehabilitating drug addicts.

Mehdi Ali, the regional representative in the Middle East and North
Africa for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),
hailed the Interior Ministry's efforts in its fight against drugs. Ali
said that the ministry succeeded in reducing the drug supply through
the destruction of large planted areas, gaining the attention of the
UNODC, which he said is trying to learn from the Lebanese experience.

He added that Lebanon was the only country that destroyed its drug
crops without collecting any foreign aid, which is in fact a sore
point for many activists, farmers and politicians.

Mehdi also hailed the ministry's media campaign which is aimed at
reducing drug demand, saying that Murr had a "comprehensive plan that
would lead to the final abolition of this plague."

Deir al-Ahmar Mayor Khalil Sukkar, who was present for a workshop
following the addresses, said all of the country's farmers were
against drugs.

"But farmers are out of work and starving, and nobody is offering the
substitute," he complained.

Sukkar argued that farmers were not drawn to drug cultivation out of
the profit motive, but as a rational choice because of the market and
the poor infrastructure situation.

Farmers are "not getting rich" by planting drugs, said Sukkar, but
they are encouraged to do so because it is easy to sell their crop and
because drug cultivation requires little in the way of water supplies.