Loretta Speaks

Our friend Loretta Nall has been tearing it up at the confab for the Progressive Dems in DC this week. She sends in her report from day two where she confronted the stuffed shirts and laid drug policy reform on the table. Unsurprisingly, they didn't have an answer so they ignored the question but it sounds like she found a lot of support among the rank and file.

She also points us to an enlightening statement from the The Senlis Council, "an international drug policy think tank said that President Karzai’s priority should be to tackle the drug problem in Afghanistan with new policy initiatives as the current situation risks undermining the fragile newly formed Afghan democracy."

“President Karzai is right in opposing the chemical spraying for crop eradication which has been proposed by the United States,” said Emmanuel Reinert, Executive Director of The Senlis Council. “Any kind of action against Afghan farmers would be catastrophic, especially before the Parliamentary elections. Even manual eradication would have very negative effects on the community as it would discourage allegiance to the state and encourage deeper ties with war lords who would be seen by farmers as more understanding of their plight.”

The Senlis Council said that realistic solutions to the drug problem in Afghanistan need to be proposed by the international community and that measures such as forced eradication should not be considered as they would be very damaging to the fragile democracy.

Citing a global shortage of legal morphine for pain relief, the Council rightly notes that "putting the opium market in the hands of Afghan businessmen and farmers instead of in the warlords can only help build the Afghan state," said Emmanuel Reinert. "Drug production in Afghanistan is a global problem which demands global cooperation to find the solutions."

They go on to point out "this year’s 64% increase in Afghan opium production as illustrates a massive failure of the U.S.-led ‘war’ approach to drug control, and that the current strategy for drug control endangers the future of Afghanistan."

They understate the problem - from the coca plots of Colombia to the poppy fields in the East - the US war on some drugs endangers the whole planet.