According to the New York Times, opium cultivation in Afghanistan has reached record levels for the second year in a row, despite a $600,000,000 US counter-narcotics effort. Having previously clamped down on poppy production, the Taliban is (are?) apparently now encouraging farmers to grow opium in the areas they control. US efforts to eradicate the crop have (obviously) been ineffective and only served to radicalize the local population.
Which brings us to our somewhat radical proposal: pay Afghan farmers market rates for their poppies, which would then be destroyed. “Buy it and burn it,” we say, and in the process give the Taliban a dose of their own medicine, as it were. We would even allow the Incompetent-in-Chief’s speechwriters to issue said policy in his next presidential address by having him look directly into the camera and declare, “Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”
