Recent news reports discuss a dramatic rise in the amount of heroin that has been entering the United States from Afghanistan. Publicly, U.S. drug officials have been denying the existence of the rise, but off the record, they have been admitting that it is happening.

     This increase in the heroin supply from Afghanistan does not really come as a surprise. The former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan had largely wiped out the opium poppy in Afghanistan, so the only direction that the production and export numbers could move was up.

     Black markets always thrive in war zones, and people everywhere tend do whatever they can to survive. The price which poor Afghan farmers are paid for opium is far higher than they receive for other crops that they can grow. With the restraining influence of the Taliban removed, and with no effective centralized government installed in their place, it was entirely predictable that the production and export of opium and heroin would balloon.

     This rise in heroin exports from Afghanistan is just one more of the many negative consequences which have flowed from the U.S. invasion of that troubled country. That helps explain why the Bush administration wants to deny that the problem exists, and why it still has not released the figures for 2005 regarding the percentage of U.S. heroin that comes from Afghanistan.

     But the invasion of Afghanistan is not the only U.S. policy that has contributed to this problem. The United States has been helping to sustain the artificially high price of illegal drugs for decades now. This is because the primary effect of the U.S. “war on drugs” is to maintain high prices and profit margins for those involved in the drug trade. It is essentially a very expensive system of price supports for drug dealers.

     I previously wrote here about the way that the Kimberly Process, allegedly set up to fight the trade in blood diamonds, had actually operated to keep the prices of all diamonds artificially high, and therefore helps keep the trade in blood diamonds profitable. The war on drugs has the same effect as the Kimberly Process. It keeps prices artificially high, and thereby helps fuel the very trade that it is ostensibly intended to curtail.

     To curtail the production of heroin, it would be much more effective (and less expensive) to follow the example set in many European countries, where drug addiction is treated as a public health issue. In addition to funding public education about the hazards of drug use, we need to provide the best quality drug rehabilitation programs for all addicts who want to get off drugs. We need to provide clean needles to users, to minimize the spread of diseases.

     Then to really gut the market for heroin, we need to decriminalize use and possession, provide cheap or free heroin to registered addicts, and create safe places for them to use. The illegal trade in heroin would be vastly reduced. The addicts could be identified and could be provided such help in quitting as they were ready to accept. The drug houses could be replaced with a safe environment where drug use would be allowed, but not culturally reinforced.

     With their puritan origins, European Americans tend to prefer military and punitive approaches to social problems. But experience from other countries shows that military and punitive tactics are very expensive, but not very effective. We use soldiers and drug agents to eradicate poppy fields, lock up dealers and users, and otherwise fight our “war on drugs.”

     We do this because it makes us feel like we are using our heroes to fight against the problem. But after decades of fighting our war on drugs, overall levels of drug use are not significantly reduced. In terms of effectiveness in the war on drugs, the hero is a zero.

     We need to ditch the hero, and employ approaches that have been proven to be more effective by actual experience. Sure, there is still some use of heroin and other drugs in European countries that use the approaches described above, but the rate of drug use in those nations is far smaller than it is here.

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