Sunday 26 October 2014

Afghan opium: turn it to morphine

I just read that the US has spent $7.5 BILLION dollars trying to eradicate the Afghan poppy crop. And the result?..... Afghanistan has just produced the biggest opium crop in history.
Imagine if that $7.5 billion had been spent in buying the farmers' crops (steady income) setting up proper factories to manufacture morphine (jobs and careers) and then buying the morphine and shipping it to Africa where there is a drastic shortage of analgesics (morphine is still the best pain reliever there is).
I'll bet there would be enough money left over from that seven billion to set up facilities to deal with the opium addicts, who are now simply a collateral cost of the misguided "war on drugs".

Sent from my iPhone
(in Doha airport)