DRUG PROHIBITION FUELS TERRORISM

Europe Has The Right Idea In The War On Heroin

One of the many challenges facing a post-Taliban coalition government is
the corrupting influence of drug trafficking.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the raw material used
to make heroin. According to the State Department, both the Taliban and the
Northern Alliance have financed their activities by taxing the opium trade.
A recent State Department report blames the Afghan drug trade for increased
levels of global terrorism and notes that the production of opium
"undermines the rule of law by generating large amounts of cash,
contributing to regional money-laundering and official corruption."

Paradoxically, Afghanistan's brutal Taliban regime was able to reap obscene
profits from the heroin trade because of drug prohibition, not in spite of
it. The same lesson, unfortunately, applies here at home.

Just as alcohol prohibition did in the early 1900s, the modern-day drug war
subsidizes organized crime. An easily grown weed like marijuana is
literally worth its weight in gold in U.S. cities. In Colombia, the various
armed factions waging civil war are financially dependent on America's drug
war. The illicit trade keeps prices high and a cartel reaps the profits.
While U.S. politicians ignore the historical precedent of alcohol
prohibition, Europeans are instituting harm reduction, a public health
alternative that seeks to minimize the damage associated with both drug use
and drug prohibition.

There is a middle ground between drug prohibition and legalization. On the
cutting edge of harm reduction, Switzerland's heroin maintenance trials
have been shown to reduce drug-related disease, death and crime among
chronic addicts. Modeled after U.S. methadone-maintenance programs
pioneered here in New York, the trials are being replicated in Germany,
Spain and the Netherlands.

In England, where more than 90 percent of heroin comes from Afghanistan,
the Association of Chief Police Officers is hoping to break the link
between heroin and crime by re-instituting heroin maintenance. The practice
of prescribing heroin to addicts was standard in England from the 1920s to
the 1960s. In response to U.S. pressure, prescription heroin maintenance
was discontinued in 1971. The loss of a controlled distribution system and
subsequent creation of an unregulated illicit market led the number of
heroin addicts to skyrocket from fewer than 2,000 in 1970 to roughly 50,000
today. England's top cops say that the drug war is part of the problem. A
spike in street prices leads desperate heroin addicts to increase criminal
activity to feed their habits. The drug war doesn't fight crime; it fuels
crime.

Portugal has decriminalized all drug consumption in order to shift scarce
resources into treatment. Based on findings that prisons transmit violent
habits rather than reduce them, a majority of European Union countries have
decriminalized soft drugs like marijuana. Switzerland is now on the verge
of taxing and regulating the sale of marijuana to adults. The reason?
Something often heard during election years when opportunistic politicians
seek to scare up votes: the need to protect children from drugs.
Acknowledging the social reality of marijuana use, pragmatic Swiss
policymakers argue that taking control of the most popular illicit drug out
of the hands of organized crime will reduce exposure to heroin and other
hard drugs.

America won't likely tax and regulate the sale of marijuana anytime soon,
much less institute heroin maintenance, because politicians here are afraid
to appear "soft on crime." But they wind up supporting a $50-billion war on
consensual vices that finances organized crime at home and terrorists
abroad. According to many drug policy experts, U.S. insistence on the
prohibition model is the single biggest obstacle to reducing Afghanistan's
reliance on the opium crop as a means of generating hard currency.

This country, founded on the concept of limited government, is using its
superpower status to export a dangerous moral crusade around the globe. The
vast majority of Afghan-produced heroin is consumed in Europe. If
Afghanistan is to rebuild a civil society without the corrupting influence
of drug trafficking, the United States needs to adopt a laissez-faire
approach to harm reduction in Europe. Universal access to methadone and
heroin maintenance in Europe would deprive organized crime of a core client
base. This cutback could render heroin trafficking unprofitable, spare
future generations the scourge of addiction and undermine the funding of
any remnants of the Taliban regime.