PBS recently aired a documentary about the resurgent Taliban on Frontline.
The Taliban are smuggling opium to finance their insurgency.
Why not pay opium farmers in Afghanistan to grow nothing? Pay them the same price that the smugglers would have paid them.
It would be easier to monitor compliance with the opium eradication program if the fields were empty.
Owners of land in the U.S. have been paid by the government not to grow tobacco for decades.
