A better way to deal with Afghanistan's poppy crop

Afghanistan provides more than 90% of the world's heroin, which is made from poppies. The amount has skyrocketed since the Taliban regime that sheltered

Osama bin Laden was toppled in 2001.

The poppy boom feeds heroin addicts in Europe and in the USA. It also provides income for the resurgent Taliban, which is battling American and

NATO forces and which has decided that its religious strictures against drugs don't preclude it from cashing in on the heroin trade.

So what to do?

There might be a better way to bridge the clashing agendas of the wars on terror and drugs.

The Senlis Council, a group based in Europe and Afghanistan,
proposes legalizing and managing the poppy crops, turning them into
medicines such as morphine. It wants to adapt a program that largely
eliminated heroin production in Turkey in the 1970s with the support of
President Nixon and Congress.