Only someone with a PhD could come up with a take this bad.
The article essentially boils down to a plea to let people grow hard drugs instead of the food they need to eat. "Money" is better than actual usable things they can grow.
Well, it is. If opium is more valuable than food crops, farmers should grow opium. Then they can buy the equivalent amount of food and still have money to spare.
That's how the economy works. It's called opportunity cost. You should always create the most valuable thing you can, assuming of course that you can sell all of it.
Self-dependence is more of a state-level concern. If the state values self-dependence they can subsidize and otherwise incentivise types of agriculture they prefer.
Outright prohibiting a crop obviously also serves that goal but it also weakens the states economy and could cause tensions if farmers lose profits.
And there are uses for opium besides street drugs. Opiates are used a lot in medicine.
It is not surprising to find CIA propaganda online. This case is particularly glaring, but stuff like this gets shared here daily, and in cases like Russia vs Ukraine just contradicting it gets your comment removed.
it's the "United States Institute of Peace," which is a government institution, somewhere between a think-tank and propaganda division, evidently. think Voice of America, or Radio Free Europe. like, it's literally fully funded by Congress and was set up under the Reagan administration.
incredible. What is bad for Afghan's is US seizure of Afghan central bank deposits and full spectrum sanctions regime designed to cripple whatever is left of the economy and further immiserate one of the poorest people on earth.
In what way is it disinformation? Do you have evidence to counter the information in the article? Or does your train of thought just end at "drugs are bad mkay"?
The country is on the verge of famine and does not have the resources to treat opiate addicts. Its state assets abroad have all been seized, and its not certain which nations will engage in further sanctions.
I don't know in which world miles of illegal poppy for an opiate black market is a good thing, either. I am quite certain if they had left the black market to its own devices, we'd be seeing "WAR ON DRUGS NOW! Taliban terrorists hook your child on heroin" instead.
Famine can be solved by growing food or buying food. If opium is twice as valuable as potatoes then they could grow opium and buy twice as many potatoes as they could otherwise have grown.
Self reliance is important but generally less important than survival. If they don't have resources to treat opiate addicts they don't have to, the addicts are responsible for their own problems. We should try to help if we can but if we can't, we can't.
Poppy fields have legitimate uses, they are not just for producing street drugs. Heroin, morphine, codeine and others are products of the opium poppy and all of them are used medically. I also doubt this prohibition will make much difference in terms of drug addiction, they will get their drugs one way or another just like everywhere else.
> The country ... does not have the resources to treat opiate addicts
If the best country in the world "does not have the resources to treat opiate addicts", how could a country bombed for 20 years by the best country in the world, have those resources ?
The article essentially boils down to a plea to let people grow hard drugs instead of the food they need to eat. "Money" is better than actual usable things they can grow.