When you think about it, this "new strategy" isn't any dumber than the DEA running around "eradicating" what we call ditch weed.
All along the Missouri River there were hemp plantations. Rendering the fiber required lots of water and manual labor. So here and there you can find volunteers from either the plantations or just the natural stands of hemp that were once considered an asset.
Of course they weigh it out and multiply that by the "street value" and the news media sucks on that worm like a bluegill in spawn. Sometimes they even run a photo of the operation and of course the agents are decked out in black SWAT togs - hopefully sweating their asses off.
Because only a fool would try to smoke it, and only a thief would try to sell it.
Yet they do sell "it" to the public who are largely ignorant. But as long as the local cops get some credit, and people really believe that someone is growing the evil weed in their backyard, the ruse works.
If only it was "just" the DEA then maybe some rational thought would prevail and farmers would be able to grow hemp, and the more potent varieties would be rescheduled to a Class 3 so doctors could prescribe it. The VA hospitals dispense it for nausea when patients undergo chemotherapy, but according to the same government it has no medicinal value.
Now virtually every bureaucracy, big and small, receives funding of one sort or another from the drug war, so it is self-perpetuating. No bureaucrat wants his budget cut and so the farce goes on.
Economics would dictate a different course of action in Afghanistan, as I mentioned in the post. And you can bet the farmers don't see anything close to $70 million for their crop so we could probably pay them a lot less and they'd be happy - if we could protect them from the drug lords.
But leave it to the ObamaMamas to deploy a feel good but largely useless program of crop replacement at a cost that is surely 10 times as expensive.
