I've always felt that the US war on drugs was grievous waste of time and money. Furthermore, I deplore the way in which we've exported our Puritanical beliefes and policy (as well as our hypocritical glorification of parts of drug culture) on the matter to the rest of the world. Anyone who hasn't seen the documentary Grass absolutely should, it's really interesting.

Anyway, here's an interstesting article on US involvement in Afghan opium production

Turns out this has been a record year. Afghanistan produces a vast amount of the world's opium and therefore is responsible for the majority of the heroine in circulation. Although it was one of the US's explicit goals to decrease opium production in Afghanistan, it would seem that it's been expanding rapidly. While certian goverment officials would like to blame this on the Taliban, it seems that unseating the Taliban directly contributed to the increase. Where opium production was outlawed under the Taliban governement, and the ban was fairly well enforced (mind you I don't support the Taliban, I'm just saying that it's clear that they aren't responsible for the opuim production) the production has nearly doubled since Hamad Karzai took office. Furthermore, nearly a third of the country's GDP is dependent on opium production and large scale destruction of the crops could result in severe destabilization for the already troubled country.

It's a really intersting article. You should read it.