OxBlog

# Posted 8:54 AM by Taylor Owen

ONE GOOD AND ONE BAD...: move by the current Canadian government. First the good. Along with other Commonwealth members, and in notable contrast to Bush's recent statements, Canada has led the way on suspending Pakistan from the Commonwealth.

Now the bad. The current government is trying to shut down the supervised injection site in Vancouver. The site has been an unqualified success, and serves as a portal to getting people into the health care system. If anyone thinks these people should just be locked up, watch this short but tragic globe and mail documentary. That's right, just lockin'em up will do it. Nonsense. This gets directly into a discussion of the seriously flawed irradiation policy that will likely be undertaken this winter in Afghanistan. I'll have more on this asap, but just to muddy the waters a bit, Canada exports almost as much illegal narcotics as Afghanistan. Perhaps we should start at home, or, shockingly, with the demand side of this problem.

Lest one think these are unrelated, the war in Afghanistan has brought to light wider international issues that directly effect our potential success. Both Pakistan and the opium trade are serious destabilizing forces in Afghanistan. Dealing with both is therefore critical to our continued involvement. As Dave and I argued, here, there are deal breakers in this war. The status quo on both Pakistan and the global opium trade, are unsustainable.

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Comments:

"serves as a portal to getting people into the health care system"

Insert joke here about Canada health care system.

1. Why do they need the health care system, they already have their drugs.

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:33 PM

Both Pakistan and the opium trade are serious destabilizing forces in Afghanistan.

Taylor looks you forgot or dropped main neighbor to Afghanistan other tan Pakistan who had a history of opium trade!

The fact is UN neither before nor after the war helped Afghani farmers to restore their life with normal farming instead Warlords return back with full potential of opium farming and trading, whatever way opium trade penetrating from Afghanistan, Pakistan have its own problems, but in same time you forgot that Afghanistan have long borders with Iran, its very evident that opium trading passing through to the Arabian Gulf States and beyond.

May can add that now in Iraq opium farming and trading start showing in southern Iraq surprisingly Iraq was never been in any time a place for opium farming, but this new thing in both countries raising one question: where US went the opium farming and trade rising? Why this?

Need deep look and answers.

Truth

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:32 AM