NO DIFFERENCE

On a recent television interview, Condolezza Rice, President Bush's
national security advisor, gave voice to her biased thoughts about
primitive Afghanistan agriculture.

Rice believes it would be a more wonderful world if the farmers in that
ravaged country would abandon their one meaningful cash crop (opium
poppies) and grow some fruit and vegetables for sale in the local marketplace.

Supposedly, it would be much better for the struggling farmers and
destitute shoppers if Afghanistan adopted the Rice Farm Initiative.

Does the Bush adviser have like thoughts about the cash crop (tobacco) of
Kentucky? Afghan opium gives a foolish consumer outlandish hallucinations,
but in a non-lethal fashion. Tobacco furnishes the consumer temporary
relief from nicotine addiction but with dire consequences. Relief is very
often finalized with death.

Is the growing of opium poppies, which may result in the transitory
bewilderment of too many people, worse than the harvesting of tobacco and
the making of cigarettes that eventually results in the early, painful
deaths of people by the millions around the world?

Is it wrong for the humble farmers of Afghanistan to grovel out an
existence by providing momentary pleasure to countless downtrodden, but
acceptable for American corporations (Big Tobacco), with Washington
connivance, to fatten their bottom lines, while selling death around the world?

Howard E. Marlin

Lexington