Who benefits from the Afghan Opium Trade?

Why has our government allowed the Taliban/Al Ciada to grow and harvest and export opium to other countries? The year before the invasion, the Taliban were burning opium crops. Now they are breaking records.

Sources
Washington Post-Afghan Poppy Breaks Record
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...
Guardian-Taliban Destroy Poopy Crops
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Articl...
Yahoo!-Afghan Officials Aid Drug Traffickers
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061128/ap_o...
Raw Story-Karzai's brother linked to Drug Lords
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Secret...

The sources are not there for decoration. At least become informed on the subject before answering the question!

Hmmm. Who do you think makes the most from drugs. The answer is right under your nose.

The suckers who smoke it!

It's one of their top cash crops. How else could they exist?

It was one way the country could rebuild and we saved our money!!

the backers get the benefits ,but you would not like the answer, as to who they are.
apart from that the users are happy.

who doesn't really think that it matters? Opium smokers
and drug dealers are hand in glove with certain _______
So if they really wanted to halt it . They could too much money in that game

Perhaps some pharmaceutical companies...there are many prescription opiates such as Demerol and Oxycontin.

the Taliban/ al Qaida
our enemies
organized crime

The Afghani Opium Traders?

The warlords who own the farms, the farmers who work them - essentially lots of people who aren't the 'government' of Afghanistan.

One way to solve this problem is this.

Every government NEEDS opium, in order to manufacture the painkiller morphine. Most governments have a limited stock of opium poppies, which are grown in secret locations, then harvested.

The Afghan opium poppy growers have little interest in growing other crops - why would you grow corn when you can grow opium just as easily and make ten thousand percent more profit? However, if you go to their fields and burn all their crops, they'll have put in a year's labour for nothing - and likely starve.

Why don't we combine these two problems, and make Afghanistan the world's morphine producer? That way the growers don't lose out, and we have a ready supply of cheap morphine available. Plus you could keep tabs on where a good 90% of it goes (as some will always slip through), which means you've taken a huge chunk out of the illegal heroin market. It will also take production out of the hands of warlords, and when the time comes we can gradually phase it out.

The worlds Drug War industry.

Some Communist/socialist dictator once said that a population more easily controlled are those that are on drugs ...Dummies that use the dope ARE dopes, supporting Taliban, Al-Quida and street thugs in their hometowns...how about that?