Commenting on the US reluctance to eradicate the poppy fields, Robert Weiner, a former US drug policy spokesman, said that fear of unemployment and instability in the country cannot be considered a sufficient reason for not eradicating the fields, as some legal substitution for the farmer’s present occupation can be provided.

“On the matter of survival of the farmers, we’re not out to make ‘happy farmers’ in Afghanistan who make money off killing the youth of the world, including in Russia. There’s got to be crop substitutions in addition to the eradication of the fields, as there has been in Colombia, which has cut Colombian cocaine by 50 percent very successfully. So, eradication works.”