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The movement of a turbine into Afghanistan makes for fascinating reading. The Economist concludes:
Electricity is the basis of any long-term economic development, which in turn is essential to winning hearts and minds. Without power there can be no factories to draw young men away from the Taliban; and without refrigeration there is little hope of developing, storing and exporting crops other than opium poppies.
But Anthony posed a question yesterday which I thought was interesting.
Why not buy the opium from the Aghan farmers, and then destroy it? In other words, pay more than the going market rate for the opium and then do what you want with it. It would kill the opium supply to the rest of the world, pacify Afghan farmers by avoiding destroying their crops, and boost the Afghan economy?
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8/9/2008 at 10:48 am
Anthony Sheridan
Thanks for the link Gavin
8/9/2008 at 1:46 pm
Gavin Sheridan
No worries.
8/9/2008 at 3:01 pm
Dan Sullivan
That is an excellent question and if we joined that up with the idea that people who are addicted should register as such and the state could then look to give them enough to function we could square the circle of most petty crime being drug related. After all with so much cutting and product lost in the smuggling process, we’d have bought more than enough to meet demand.
But we won’t See the thing is we’re (society) not really that interested in dealing with the drug problem because we don’t want to face up to what the problem is.
8/9/2008 at 9:08 pm
Gavin Sheridan
It’s odd alright Dan.
Any detractors out there?