America's Taliban-Support Program

by Jacob Sullum -

America's drug policies provide a major boost to the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Given how disastrous these same policies have been in Columbia, isn't it high time to re-think our approach?

According to a recent report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, 19,047 hectares of poppies were eradicated in Afghanistan this year, 24 percent more than in 2006.

Meanwhile, the number of opium-free provinces more than doubled, from six to 13.

Those victories were somewhat overshadowed by the news that the total amount of land devoted to opium poppies in Afghanistan rose from 165,000 to 193,000 hectares, an increase of 17 percent.

Due to “favorable weather conditions,” estimated opium production rose even more, hitting an all-time high of 8,200 metric tons, 34 percent more than the previous record, set last year.

Since their efforts have had precisely the opposite of the result they intended, U.S. drug warriors, predictably enough, plan to try harder, calling for more eradication, possibly including aerial herbicide spraying, and more interdiction.

Over the long term, if history is any guide, these supply-reduction measures will have little or no impact on heroin consumption. Over the short term, they will continue to strengthen the Taliban insurgency.

The U.N. report emphasizes that poppy growing is becoming increasingly concentrated in the southern provinces where the Taliban are strongest.

Having forgotten whatever religious scruples they may once have had about the opium trade, the Taliban make money by charging poppy farmers for protection and taxing traffickers at checkpoints, a fundraising opportunity created by U.S. demands that the Afghan government wipe out a crop the U.N. says accounts for one-third of the Afghan economy.

A field of opium poppies (from Burma)

“Afghanistan’s drug money corrupts the government, weakens institutions, and strengthens the Taliban,” says a new report from the U.S. State Department.

It would be more accurate to say that America’s drug policy, which it insists on exporting to every other country in the world, corrupts the Afghan government, weakens institutions, and strengthens the Taliban.

The State Department draws exactly the wrong conclusion from this situation, saying “the increasing linkage between the region’s major drug trafficking organizations and insurgencies prompts the need to elevate the drug enforcement mission and integrate it appropriately into the comprehensive security strategy.”

In fact, the “drug enforcement mission” — which alienates Afghans from their government, helps fund the insurgency and distracts NATO and Afghan forces from the central goal of reducing violence and establishing order — is fundamentally at odds with the “security strategy.”

The U.N. says this year’s opium output, which represents 93 percent of the illicit world supply, “exceeds global demand by a large margin,” indicating a stockpile of thousands of tons.

Despite their concerns that opium profits are helping to fund terrorism, U.S. and U.N. drug warriors seem intent on raising the value of that stockpile by curtailing production.

Even if they’re successful, they cannot reasonably hope to have a lasting impact on heroin availability. If cracking down on opium production in some Afghan provinces simply shifts it to others, cracking down on opium production throughout Afghanistan will simply shift it to other countries.

That has been the general pattern during the last century of opium “eradication,” which might more accurately be called opium relocation.

A decade ago, Pino Arlacchi, then the head of the U.N.’s anti-drug program, declared that “global coca leaf and opium poppy acreage totals an area less than half the size of Puerto Rico,” so “there is no reason it cannot be eliminated.”

For a less optimistic man, the fact that such a tiny percentage of the earth’s surface is needed to supply the world with heroin and cocaine would be cause to doubt the effectiveness of eradication.

Speaking of cocaine, in recent years, the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars on anti-drug aid to Colombia, with no discernible effect on prices or purity.

Colombia, which still supplies about 90 percent of America’s illicit cocaine, has been helping to train Afghan police in anti-drug tactics, and Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says it provides “a good model” for Afghanistan.

The Role of Government in Modern U.S. Society: What Would Adam Smith Say?

Jody W. Lipford, Jerry Slice

The role of government in the United States and other western democracies has expanded dramatically over the last century. Compared to its pre-twentieth century functions, government has taken on new and vast roles, including old-age pensions, government-provided health care, and a host of other programs that typically comprise a modern welfare state.

What would Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century Scottish moral philosopher, say about the expanded role of our modern government? For Smith, the ideal functions of government were few and well defined. In his classic work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, written in 1776, Smith outlined three important government functions: national defense, administration of justice (law and order), and the provision of certain public goods (e.g., transportation infrastructure and basic and applied education). Clearly, government has grown beyond the bounds of these simple duties.

Some would argue that government has expanded because of necessity, that modern society requires redistribution of wealth for stability and regulation to constrain the excesses of an unfettered market. Many believe it is unrealistic for government in the twenty-first century to adhere to the limited roles envisioned by Smith. We have our doubts about these arguments. However, we raise a different but related question: if Smith is right that national defense, administration of justice, and public goods are essential to a free and prosperous society, might government’s expanded roles one day crowd out its traditional and essential functions to that society’s detriment?

When we examine evidence on this question, the findings are striking. We first categorize national government expenditures according to whether or not Smith would support them. Under the category Smith would support, we include expenditures on national defense, administration of justice, transportation, and education. We consider social expenditures on Social Security, Medicare, health, income security, and labor and social services beyond the bounds that Smith would support. Next, we examine trends in these expenditures.

Here are some of our findings:

• In 1962, expenditures that Smith advocated accounted for 54.4 percent of the U.S. budget. Yet, by 2005, this percentage had fallen to 27.6 percent, with the Congressional Budget Office projecting this percentage to fall to 22.0 percent by 2011.
  
  
• The trend for the social expenditure category runs in the opposite direction. In 1962, social expenditures accounted for only 23.4 percent of the U.S. budget, but by 2005, they accounted for 58.1 percent, and they are expected to account for 63.3 percent of the budget by 2011.
  
  
• When we examine state and local government expenditures, we find the same trends, though they are less pronounced than their federal counterparts. The trends show no sign of reversal for either level of government.

Our analysis shows that social spending is rapidly replacing expenditures on traditional government functions advocated by Smith. As a result, governments will find it increasingly difficult to provide and maintain traditional services without significant tax increases or larger deficits.

These observations are not lost on federal budgetary experts. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) documents that the amount and composition of federal spending have “changed dramatically,” and that most of that growth has been in three programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These programs now account for 42 percent of federal expenditures. In total, mandatory programs now account for over half of federal spending. The CBO notes that health expenditures will increase much more than Social Security expenditures in coming years, and that “if past growth rates persist, spending for health care will eventually consume such a large share of the nation’s output that real (inflation-adjusted) spending on other goods will have to decline sharply.”

The consequences are clear. Continued higher rates of social spending will require higher taxes, larger deficits, or dramatic cuts in other government programs, such as those deemed essential by Smith. These, in turn, may cause “slow private capital formation, lower economic growth, and in the extreme...a sustained economic contraction,” according to the CBO. These outcomes are the opposite of Smith’s model for economic prosperity.

Despite these dire predictions and their resulting consequences, the political will for change is weak. And the longer these trends continue, the more difficult it will be politically to change them. Perhaps it is time for the American public and its elected officials to give more heed to the wise words of a Scottish philosopher who wrote some 230 years ago.