A 9-year-old girl was recently sold as a bride in order to pay off a debt to Afghani drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban. This comes as a result of U.S. "Drug War's" efforts to eradicate poppies, the plant from which opium and heroin are derived.
Afghanistan produces 93 percent of the world's heroin to fill our demand. The most effective way the United States and other countries can both reduce our demand for poppy and cut out the Afghani drug trafficking middleman is to buy the poppy now.
With the intention of aiding Afghani farmers with the seeds they need to grow other crops, we can assist them by building roads to get their crops to the market.
This, however, will not be enough. As long as there will be demand for drugs, no drug policy that focuses only on the supply-side will succeed.
I urge you to contact Sen. Jim Webb and Senator-elect Mark Warner to ask that they hold a hearing to discuss whether our domestic policies toward opium and heroin are subverting our mission in Afghanistan. Dispensary clinics have been successful at reducing heroin demand in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Canada and even Kentucky in the 1960s.
For America and our allied forces to effectively defeat the Taliban Muslim extremists, we must quit dragging our feet in the ground by waging the War on Drugs and begin developing sensible drug policies at home and abroad.
Kristopher Reinertson
Senior, political science and sociology
Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Virginia Tech Chapter President