Why do Afghan farmers grow poppies?

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If you want to understand Afghanistan’s opium problem, put yourself in the shoes of an Afghan farmer. Your country’s in turmoil, you’re largely disconnected from the rest of the population, and you have few options to earn a living. There’s no irrigation infrastructure, and poppies are the only plants tough enough to withstand the environmental conditions. You could plant wheat, but why bother? Poppies will earn you eight times as much money.

So the extent to which Afghanistan has become ground zero for opium, as the latest United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime 2007 World Drug Report makes plain, should be no surprise. Around 92 percent of the world’s heroin comes from Afghan poppies, and—thanks to the 49 percent increase in poppy cultivation in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2006—global opium production reached a record high of 6,610 metric tons last year. Opium production and trade accounts for at least a third of all economic activity in Afghanistan.

Nearly 3 million Afghan farmers are involved in poppy cultivation. But most of them are not employed by organized crime groups and have little if any part in refining the drug. They’re just trying to earn a living. Yet crop substitution programs aren’t working, mainly because the substitutes can’t pay the bills. Until that calculus changes, the “war on drugs” in Afghanistan will probably be doomed to failure.