Legalizing the growth and export of opium and derivatives would allow the government of Afghanistan to regulate and tax the trade, which is the most likely foundation of the Afghan economy in the short- and mid-term.

Legal and regulated access to opiates in consuming countries has been shown to allow addicts to easily control their use, and indeed most will quit by themselves within a year if they know they have access to cheap, quality drugs from a reputable source.

Try to at least surprise me with something insightful, because this argument isn’t working.  

But again, the thrust of my argument is that it’s dodgy at best to take this quirk of Taliban punishment and extrapolate it to say that they must  care more for their drug-addled citizenry than the US.

“Heterosexuals were never in much risk from AIDS.”
huh?

“The federal government bullies states and foreign countries whose citizens wish to decriminalize drugs.”
No shit Sherlock! US fed gov will bully foreign countries about a whole lot of issues where the locals want their nation to do something different then big bro USA (oorah oorah oorah) wants…

Bear in mind that the Taliban which exists at present is different in composition from the pre-2001 Taliban. NATO and the Northern Alliance defanged the Taliban when they first took the country, the current activities are largely run by people who had no role in the pre-2001 Taliban, many of them are recruits from madrassas in the Pashtun region of Northern Pakistan, or militants from other parts of the Muslim world.

Immediately prior to the Taliban’s restriction in 2000, under Taliban rule there was a bumper crop in 1999.  In 2001, Opium resumed a huge crop…the Taliban assualted the Opium trade to weaken the warlords, not out of altruism.  And after they were unseated in Afghanistan, they got heavily back in to Opium for money.

So I’m a little leery of seeing the Taliban as good moral actors, here.

I’ll repeat it again… =)

I’d also like to add this: None of us commenting here, or the person who drew the comic, would have survived under Taliban rule.The humanity of a law can only be judged in context of the society as a whole.

It’s a reprehensible claim which takes not one iota of reality into consideration.

You must live in an interesting reality where reality is not considered to be reality. The comic cites facts.

I think you’ll find that its the Northern Alliance that was growing the bulk of the opium back when the Taliban controlled most of the country. So, yeah, there’s a fair chance that there was some basic humanity at work in their drugs policy, unlike the American policy. Why not? Pure evil only exists in cheap fiction.

The humanity of a law can only be judged in context of the society as a whole.

“The United Nations Drug Office believes the Taliban made up to $300 million from opium sales in 2008. Money is not only made from the sales, but from also charging “protection fees” for those moving the drugs over theAfghanistan borders and for the drug laboratories. Afghan opium cultivation in 2008 fell nearly 20 percent, and production fell six percent. However, according to Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the U.N. Drug Office, this does not reflect progress by those fighting the Taliban. The Taliban has simply produced so much that they have reduced cultivation and are stockpiling current supplies to artificially keep prices higher..

In the next breath in the text below it points out they “had almost no rehabilitative services at the time. ” Soooo, it’s a more humane law in theory (the treatment) with much, much harsher consequences in the end for drug using (the 2nd time), drug dealing, dancing, and walking around showing your face while possessing womanly bits?

Is this that satire thing I heard about, or is my bad pain day fucking with my brain able to connect dots.

edit: me suck at grammar

Not that the US doesn’t have fucked up drugs laws I would like to see abolished, but to  suggest the Taliban is somehow more humane than anyone short of the Nazis is not only ridiculous, but  belittles the plight of their victims.