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Nobel Economist Offers Drug Strategy

In the context of Afghanistan, but is applicable to Colombia, too.

The article points out that "both the US and the European Union assist their farmers through loan and price support programmes and other incentives." so why don't they do so for Colombian and Afghan famers instead of giving the aid to military contractors/mercenaries?

"Lack of productive alternatives has driven farmers to turn to growing poppies. Drug-traffickers support farmers by advancing credit and sharing some of the risks of production...

Crop eradication – which often kills subsistence crops and pollutes water at the same time – has proved ineffective in controlling drug cultivation. It has proved to be a way to create huge profits for criminal and armed groups.

..once production of lawful crops increases, donors should provide know-how, technical support and credit for the local industrialisation of such crops. At the same time, donors should open their markets through special preferential tariff treatment to light, labour-intensive manufactures from Afghanistan, including textiles."

Edmund Phelps, the 2006 Nobel laureate in economics, is director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia and author of the reissued ‘Rewarding Work’. Graciana del Castillo, adjunct professor of economics at Columbia, is author of the forthcoming book ‘Post-Conflict Economic Reconstruction’

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/eb54a20c-ba14-11dc-abcb-0000779fd2ac.html

By vladimiro on Jan 5, 2008, 19:12 in Politics & the war.

chrispej says on Jan 5, 2008, 19:34:

Damn, it's true! Some people never leave their backyard. Hey Edmund, time to mow the lawn....

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Chelesupercono says on Jan 6, 2008, 08:43:

Only one solution: Legalize and tax the drugs.......period. There is and will never be any other solution.

never go to bed with someone crazier then you are, you will do it and you will regret it.......

0 funny, 0 helpful.