We are giving our enemies a ‘Federally insured’ bank account!
Would you vote yes to maintaining those sanctuaries for terrorist enemies so they could more easily kill and maim you, your family, your friends and your allies, and also guarantee that those enemies have continuing “Federally Insured” revenue protection? Unfortunately, you have, but when put first as questions, only a fool would answer yes. What if you were asked that question first and you had a good answer?
Think of each coca shrub and the poppy plant’s colorful flowers as tiny ISIS, Islamic or anti-free world terrorists. Now think of their effect cumulatively—in full bloom as full grown terrorists; all of them nurtured by billions of dollars in illicit narcotics revenues. Finally, think about the fact that they are fighting you and your allies, killing your sons and daughters from corrupt ‘safe havens’ within the very borders of nations you are trying to assist and even here at home.
Yet, we protect our enemies’ drug revenues that guarantee their ability to fund terror, our failing health and diminished achievements. The enemy is smiling–they are already in attack mode. They have recently murdered innocent victims in Paris, Brussels, the U.S, and elsewhere, also probably funded by drug money, as was 9/11. Mexico, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru are the major producers.
Think of a model that can be both quickly implemented and be profitable— huge net profits rather than tragic losses. A timely solution begins with basic economics. It should be no surprise to anyone that the earnings of workers differ greatly in various parts of the world and that those differences effect the costs of products and services, legal or illegal. It is this difference, for example, that allows China to produce similar or identical products, but vastly lower in cost than those produced in fully developed economies. Why would anyone be surprised then, that farmers and farm workers in rurally poor nations like Afghanistan, and other poorer nations rural farmers, for example, earn only a fraction of the incomes of their richer nation counterparts? You also won’t be surprised that everything else costs more in richer nations, from medical care to housing, education—even prison. We can easily pay producer nations to cultivate alternative legal crops using the vast cost differentials between producer and user costs. Think of this diplomacy as guaranteed by advanced scientific biocontrol technology.
Given those solutions, here’s one example. You will certainly not be surprised to learn that the poor farmers and workers who cultivate 90% of the world’s opium poppies in Afghanistan receive only $1 billion in income from growing what imposes a negative social cost of over $300 billions annually in just the top 34 richer OECD nations that use this illicit crop. That does not include 165 other less affluent drug user nations. And when the world’s poorest people, uneducated and without developed economies are also drug dependent, much hope is lost. It takes neither a Rhodes Scholar nor a WalMart shopper to see how the comparatively small amount paid to poor growers results in huge use costs to richer drug consumer nations.
Centuries of recorded history teach us that no nation has ever benefited positively from drug use or abuse. If just Afghanistan did not grow poppies you needn’t be a Nobel Laureate to see that the grower wages vs. user costs of just one drug, heroin, adds and subtracts to show how $300 billion in annual savings could then be shared by all nations. Drug diplomacy with Afghanistan might involve a $3 billion dollar yearly investment over a ten year adjustment period–$30 billion invested returning $3 trillion in return. And those billions saved multiply even quicker when you are a target nation; particularly when you remember that the 9/11 Commission concluded that the $500,000 needed to conduct the attack probably came from Afghan poppies. If you are listening to security experts, their greatest fear is of a future urban port city WMD or nuclear event that will most likely be funded by drug revenues. Such a security disaster might cost half-a-trillion dollars, or more, and 300,000 lives. The tragedy would be catastrophic!
Why do we bring such damage to the American Dream when we also know how to escape the health and mental damages of that fate as well as the terror damages? There is no prize for such simple reason, but all of us, including the people of illicit drug producing nations, will be big winners; in financial improvements, security improvements, and more individual benefits you will easily think of yourself. Finally, if you don’t like this idea, or have a much better one, please let me know.
* Walton Cook is a security writer whose views have been expressed in worldwide media, including The Economist, UPI, and others. He is the author of the well-reviewed political narcotics bio-thriller, “Buzzword” and most recently, “Compound Capitalism: Slaying the Dragon of Debt”.