Pubdate: Thu, 06 May 2010 Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB) Copyright: 2010 Canwest Publishing Inc. Contact: http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/letters.html Website: http://www.calgaryherald.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66 Author: Russell Barth Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n338/a03.html CAN'T BE DONE Re: "Kill the poppies," Letter, May 3. Norman Borecki says the UN should kill all the poppies. However, killing all of them is impossible. At best, they can't even get 20 per cent of them. This policy of partial eradication is the very thing that makes the crop so lucrative. The solution is to a buy all the opium and use it for medicine. Then the Taliban and other assorted bad guys in the area will have no revenue stream to draw from. Here at home and abroad, the math is the same -- continually criminalizing crops plays right into the bad guys' hands. The problem with that policy is that the value of Turkey's and Australia's legal opium plantations would drop. So really, our soldiers are dying in Afghanistan to protect the legal opium production of other countries. Russell Barth, Nepean, Ont. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake