frederick barton, an afghanistan expert with csis, said on c-span this morning that we ought to "shake up" the afghan opium market by spending $300M to buy poppies in the two provinces that grow half the country's crop.

that sounds like a modification of a proposal to buy up the whole crop made by ray takeyh, cfr's middle east studies director, four months ago, and—i immodestly add—by this blog a year and a half ago.

a partial buyout might be a useful experiment, but it could be risky.

i'm tempted to say anything's better than what we do now, but when you play with something as volatile as opium, you play with a potential firestorm. shaking up the market would almost certainly mean a price rise, not only in afghanistan. a higher world price of opium and the heroin made from it would lead to more crime by users and traffickers.

but buying up the whole crop would have that effect too, as would eradicating it, so i think we ought to run barton's experiment and see what happens.