"One Easy Way to Blow $7.6 Billion" Topic

"The U.S. military learned the hard way not to interfere with Afghanistan's thriving production of poppies, the colorful flowers that are the source of opium and, by extension, heroin.

Now we know the cost of that lesson—a cool $7.6 USD billion.
On Oct. 14, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction—a.k.a., SIGAR—alerted the Defense, State and Justice Departments to this latest dollar figure for poppy-elimination efforts.

And here's SIGAR's kicker. Despite the nearly $8 USD billion America has spent on eradication efforts, today the Afghan opium trade is booming. At 400,000 acres, the poppy crop in 2013 was the biggest ever…"
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Amicalement
Armand

And yet the initially curtailed it until they found out that it was a great weapon against the allies as did the against the Soviets,

Seems the west's greatest weakness is the enemy's strength.

Agent Orange programs come to mind if the high up really want to sort this one, but I suspect not as the long game and keeping oneself happily employed is more to their liking.

Just saying

You cant solve the drug problem at the source. You have to fix the end User. I thought we figured this out by the billions or is it trillions of dollars we have wasted on the drug and before that alcohol wars.

All we were doing in Afghanistan was trying to decrease the flow of money to the Talaban. So it was an attack on logistics not an attack on drugs.

Why don't we just buy all the opium from them? We can put it to legitimate use for pain control in hospital settings in the form of morphine.

The problem with that is, "Buy all you want, we'll just make more." As long as there's a market for illegal drugs, it *will* be filled.

Friend of mine that was over there said he spent at least one operation a month burning hemp and/or poppy fields…

Too bad the world can't take back all the $$$ they literally wasted on A'stan. Over the decades … Could have be put to a much better use. I'm sure …