There were, one has to admit, many who said that if there is a living refutation of the saying, ‘If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise’, it is former President George W. Bush. This especially applies to the conduct of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the associated failure of social policies operated in both countries in an effort to prepare for post-conflict peace. One example cited is his demand that the Kabul government destroy the poppy crop of Afghan tribesmen. The aim was to ‘deprive the Taliban of funds’ thereby; the result was to further alienate struggling tribesmen whose livelihood was destroyed with their crops.
Yet the infinitely better solution was obvious: buy the crop, don’t destroy it. Buy it for a generous price, thus simultaneously (a) depriving the Taliban of a money-maker, (b) cheering the Afghan tribesmen, and laying the basis for them to diversify economically, away from poppies, when peace comes, (c) getting control of the opium supply, using as much as is necessary for medical opiates, and stockpiling or burning the rest. In comparison to the billions being spent on bombs, this looks like a comparatively cheap as well as sane and effective way to solve a number of problems in one blow.
But no: Washington’s choice was to lay waste the crops and with them the hearts and minds of their growers, adding to the recruitment pool of the Taliban, lengthening the war, costing the world far more in lives, money and misery. Surely there are statesmen and women somewhere able to understand the better course of action, able to do the sums showing that buying poppies to help stop a war has to be a far cheaper option than using them to commemorate war dead.
In the short term the move would encourage poppy growing, of course, and naysayers will argue that this exacerbates a different problem. This different problem was originally created by outlawing certain kinds of drugs (not nicotine or, save for the criminal-industry-creating folly of Prohibition in the 1920s, alcohol, two of the worst), and there is a powerful case for legalising all drugs and managing their accessibility and quality exactly as nicotine and alcohol are controlled.
The ‘quality’ point is essential. Some years ago the son of an acquaintance of mine died from a massive heroin overdose on the first occasion he experimented with the substance, because he did not know how much to take and did not know that the heroin he had been supplied was very pure. If heroin could be bought in Boots it would have a consistent potency, there would be instructions on the box about the right quantity to take, and that boy would now be a young man.
Why are some drugs illegal? The answer will come that it is because they are bad for people, and that anyway consuming narcotics or hallucinogens is a contemptible resource for finding release or getting a high, for making life more colourful or more bearable. I agree with this latter point, but cannot agree that society has a right to stop people (adult people) from harming themselves if they wish, providing that they do not expect the rest of society to clean up after them. By bracketing a range of drugs as illegal, society has created a rod for its back; it has potentiated a criminal industry and assumed the vast expense of policing it, thereby creating an equally vast public problem where before there had been personal and medical problems only.
‘Sights you seldom see’ include a cabinet meeting waking up to the futility and absurdity of laws that, from gangland shootings in Manchester to the Taliban in Helmand Province, create problems we do not have to have.