In "The War on Drugs Redux," a new essay on the History News Network, Eric C. Schneider warns that current U. S. attempts to control opium production in Afghanistan are short-sighted. According to Schneider:
Afghanistan is producing bumper crops of opium poppies, funding Taliban attacks and simultaneously enriching some of the Afghani government’s warlord allies. Low heroin prices worldwide suggest that the marketplace is saturated, and American policy abroad is aimed narrowly at crop eradification while at home we are incarcerating drug users at a maddening pace. In other words, we are committing the same policy mistakes as in the past.
The complete essay is available at the History News Network site, hhn.us.
Eric C. Schneider is author of Smack: Heroin and the American City. You can listen to podcast interview of Schneider at the Penn Press podcast website.
