No, I'm not referring to the
War in
Iraq, although frankly
that
invasion seems pretty silly at this point. I'm referring to
the War on Drugs, yet another US war that cannot be won.
In the October 2006 issue of the UK magazine Prospect,
Johann Hari reports that while US troops destroy poppies
in Afghanistan, the world is short of the pain killer opium.
They are even short of morphine and opium in hospitals in
Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Hari writes, "In Kabul
hospital, half the patients who need opiate-based painkillers
are writhing in agony because they have none, while in fields
outside and across Afghanistan, farmers trying to grow
opiates are having their fields trashed and livelihoods
destroyed by western troops. This is just the most ironic
intersection between the west's 'war on drugs' and what the
World Health Organization calls 'an unprecedented global pain
crisis.' The world is suffering from an opium drought--only
about 24% of the demand for medical opiates is now being
met."
I remember a photo that was taken of me in a hospital bed
two years ago, after my aneurysm burst. I was cuddling a
huge white poodle-mixture mutt, a "therapy dog." I remember
hugging that dog well, because it was when I was finally
starting to feel happy again. I was over the pain by then. It
was supposedly the most excruciating headache I'd ever had
in my life, but thankfully, I don't remember it. Thankfully,
also, I was given morphine to relieve it. What if I hadn't been
able to take it because there was none available?
I'm not a fan of casual drug taking. In fact, Whitley
actually "stalked" our son for awhile when he was a teenager,
following him around our neighborhood when he knew his
friends were experimenting with drugs.
Whitley and I are at opposite poles when it comes to drug
taking: he's incredibly sensitive to drugs, while they don't
affect me much at all. That's probably the main reason we've
never taken them recreationally. We were once at a party
where a lot of marijuana was being smoked and the air was
thick with the fumes. The next day, Whitley came back to
our apartment all wide-eyed and said, "I passed myself
walking in the street." The effects lasted for many days: At
another party, a week later, he complimented our hostess on
the goldfish swimming around in the base of a table lamp (of
course, there weren't any). When he lived in London as a
young man, he was always hungry and friends would feed him
things like hashish brownies, just to see his reaction. He once
designed an album cover for a famous rock group under the
influence of those brownies. He wasn't aware of who they
were, since he was only interested in classical music at the
time (the character Connor, in his novel
The Grays,
is based on him).
I've never been able to figure out how to get high on drugs. I
was afraid of needles (thank goodness) and couldn't afford
cocaine, so I was left with marijuana, but I never could figure
out how to inhale (probably because I never smoked
cigarettes). My friends insisted I try, so to get them to leave
me alone, I pretended to be high. I learned there is absolutely
no feeling more lonely than being the only sober person in the
room! It was worse than faking an orgasm, as Meg Ryan
demonstrates so effectively in the movie "When Harry Met
Sally."
The friends I had in those days who smoked grass were quite
lackadaisical about their lives, to the extent that many of
them never buckled down and planned for the future until it
was too late. Instead, they postponed college and job
training and just hung out in a haze of smoke. That sounds
great when we compare them to the hordes of over-stressed
college students today, but none of them ever achieved
very much in life.
Hari writes, "At the same time [as there is a shortage of
opiates in hospitals], a violent and utopian attempt to
physically stop Afghans from growing the opiates we need is
causing us to lose a battle there that Tony Blair has
called 'essential for the safety of civilization.' Human Rights
Watch warns that the Taliban now effectively control
southern Afghanistan, and many observers warn they could
be in a position to march on Kabul and topple Hamid Karzai's
elected government within a couple of years.
"The war on the Taliban is being lost because the soldiers
sent to fight it are also being forced to wage a 'war on drugs'
that requires the destruction of a major part of the Afghan
economy." He quotes think tank director Emmanuel Reinert as
saying, "The Taliban revival is directly, intimately related to
the crop eradication program. It could not have happened if
the US was not aggressively destroying crops. And it is the
single biggest reason Afghans turned against the foreigners.
If you look at where the Americans have carried out the
forced eradication programs, it's where people cannot feed
their families because their crops have been destroyed.
That's where the Taliban is "gaining support."
Hari says, "By demanding that more than one third of the
country?s total economy be criminalized?and therefore placed
in the hands of armed gangs and warlords, rather than taxed
by the legitimate government-prohibition ensured [criminals]
will always have bigger guns and more cash than the state."
But he has a solution: "Bring the global drugs trade: Some 5%
of global GNP?into the legal economy, so countries like
Afghanistan and Colombia can reclaim their territory from
armed gangs. But that is a goal that requires vast political
change within the country driving global prohibition?the US."
Here's how it would be done: "In an Afghan equivalent to the
EU's (European Union's) common agricultural policy, instead of
destroying Afghanistan's opium crop, our governments should
simply buy it, and sell it on to produce legal opiate-based
painkillers. Instead of approaching Afghan farmers with
weapons, our representatives would be approaching them
with cash."
He ends the article with this provocative statement: "If
[the West] really wants to live up to [our] commitment to
save Afghanistan, [we] should bow out by orchestrating the
biggest heroin deal in history."
Related Entries:
31-Aug-2010: Cocooning
10-Aug-2010: A Trip to Crop Circle Country
27-Jul-2010: Marriage: Hot & Cold
06-Jul-2010: Marcelle
27-May-2010: A Trip to Esalen
11-May-2010: The Birds
13-Apr-2010: Staying Open
31-Mar-2010: I was an Angel for Easter
23-Mar-2010: Nuns I Have Known
16-Mar-2010: It Started With a Hummingbird
