Biological Warfare Against Opium Fields

October 30, 2007

According to the New York Times, the Bush administration is pressuring the Afghan government to allow aerial spraying of synthetic herbicides in rural areas. The United States wants to eradicate Afghan farmers’ harvest of opium poppies, which supply the raw material for 90 percent of the world’s heroin, and help fund the Taliban insurgency. But Afghan officials are resisting the idea, in part because of fears that the chemicals will contaminate the Afghan water supply. (The chemical that the U.S. wants to use is glyphosate, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warns can cause lung congestion, kidney damage and reproductive problems with sufficient exposure.)

But the U.S. government ultimately may deploy a more technologically advanced — and potentially even riskier — solution to destroy the poppy fields in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Since the 1970s, the U.S. has been working on using both natural and genetically engineered organisms to kill drug crops such as opium poppies and coca, the source of cocaine, according to The Sunshine Project, an international organization opposed to the use of genetic engineering in warfare. In the late 1990s, the Clinton administration tried to persuade Colombia to allow use of a U.S.-developed strain of the fungus Fusarium oxysporum against coca fields, but field tests of the organism were halted after international protests. In 2000, U.S. scientists published a study on two fungi with opium-killing properties. Asia Times reported in 2002 that the United Nations Drug Control Program, with research support and funding from the United States, had conducted tests of the effect of the fungus Pleospora papaveracea on opium poppies at the Institute of Genetics in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (a former site of Soviet biological-weapons research). In 2005, Indiana GOP Congress members Dan Burton and Mark Souder, the then-chairman of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, advocated a biological war on drugs, which potentially would include both naturally occurring and genetically manipulated organisms. "We spend millions of dollars every year on counter-narcotic efforts, including drug-crop eradication and interdiction, especially in our joint efforts in Colombia, Afghanistan and elsewhere, yet the flow of illegal and lethal narcotics continues to be a major problem in our country," stated congressman Burton. "The advent of mycoherbicides and other counter-narcotic alternatives offers us the possibility to cut off the source of these drugs literally at their roots."

The Sunshine Project’s scientists, however, warn that such tactics are "a recipe for environmental disaster." They point to the risk that drug-destroying organisms will harm other plants and insects as well, and estimate that the anti-opium fungus’s spores would persist in the soil for as long as 40 years, making the spread of the fungus difficult to control. In addition, they say that a biowar against drugs could lead to a rise in life-threatening fungal infections among humans with compromised immune systems — such as patients in Afghan hospitals. Worse yet, a scientific paper written by two Sunshine Project scientists warns that "these biological agents are lowering the political threshold for the use of biological weapons and are likely to have tremendous environmental and health impacts. The pursuit of crop-killing fungi as weapons would be a further slide down a slippery slope that, by following the same logic, could easily lead to the use of other plant pathogens, animal pathogens or even non-lethal biological weapons against humans."

There’s also the possibility that drug traffickers could strike back with biowarfare of their own. Wired News reported in 2004 that Colombian cocaine traffickers may have obtained genetically engineered herbicide-resistant coca plants to thwart the U.S. anti-drug effort.

So, should the U.S. wage a biowar against drugs in Afghanistan (or anywhere else)? Express your opinion here.

Comments

[Daniel Klaisner]

To start off i must say that this is all worthless. Why risk human lives for this problem? Even if all these plants disappear from this herbiside do you think people wont plant new ones? The way i see it is we have enough problems to worry about in OUR OWN COUNTRY we need to stop worrying about other countries so much. And it seems that this stuff will create more problems than it destroys.

[Patrick]

I'm not necessarily endorsing this view, but I think the counter-argument would be that we've got to stop drugs such as heroin and cocaine at their source, because interdicting them at the borders or arresting dealers inside the U.S. obviously isn't working. The U.S. is funding other sorts of antidrug efforts in Mexico and Colombia, though those don't seem to be working so well either.

[Chuck]

When weighed against the deaths caused by the drug trade post-harvest, I'm inclined to support this tactic. It seems a likelier true solution to the drug trade, when compared with blanket arrests and attempts at border control. When one thinks of the amount of human blood shed in the US and abroad, long before the drug is actually sold to a user, the solution has a tremendous upside. I disagree with Mr Klaisner above, who says we should worry about our own country, in that I feel this IS in fact about our own country. The vast majority of crime in the US is drug induced or drug related in some way, and when one considers that the so called "war on drugs" has up until this point been an unmitigated failure, this solution, albeit with restrictions to minimize health risks in place, is far better than filling up our prisons and hospitals with drug abusers.

[Allen St. Pierre (Executive Director of NORML)]

It has been said that 'the power to tax is both the power to create or destroy'. Do modern societies largely control two of the most dangerous and deadly drugs, alcohol and tobacco products, by unleashing biological warfare or do they simply employ tax-based, free market-oriented solutions?

Imperfect as they are, taxation and regulatory schemes are discernibly better for genuine control than prohibition--which is the abdication of policy making.

Tobacco use has been cut in half in the US since the 1960s, and this was achieved through verifiable and credible public health education and taxing policies--not through prohibition (which NEVER works for popularly consumed consumer goods in free-market oriented democracies) or possibly worse, by commiting the nation to biological warfare against inanimate organisms.

Patrick's points are well taken and intimation that Americans should be mindful (maybe even fearful!) of prohibitionist governments attempting to 'control' a plant species like cannabis by launching minimally tested biological agents into either foreign or domestic ecosystems.

Rather than employ potentially dangerous and destructive biological agents to 'control' cannabis, if government was genuinely concerned about controlling cannabis production and use, the government should employ a much more logical, environmentally-friendly and effective control device: a tax stamp.

It works pretty well for tobacco and most alcohol products, why not cannabis?

Further, prior American governments have already engaged in this kind of scientific 'nitwittery' and have either failed or more pragmatic and practical minds prevailed.

In the 1970s the US equipped the Mexican government with a dangerous herbicide called paraquat, in hopes of forever eradicating cannabis in North and central America. When the public and interest groups like NORML found about the government poisioning--rather than taxing--cannabis crops, the outcry from the general public and scientific community forced the US and Mexican governments to stop the iatrogenic practice.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraquat)

Today, the US government eradicates between 300-800 million domestically grown cannabis plants annually, (ironically, according to the DEA's own data, 96% of the cannabis plants eradicated in the US are in fact not 'marijuana' but feral 'ditchweed' [AKA hemp], leftover from the American government's World War II hemp cultivation and subsidy program) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne9UF-pFhJY)

Unfortunately, for years, the American public and environmental groups have turned a blind eye in the impossible struggle for a 'drug-free' America and tacitly support the DEA, US military and National Guards' massive and domestic use of the commercially available 'weed killer' Round-up (AKA Glyphosate) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup).

Further, despite obvious public health and human biological concerns, and common sense, the US government has already tried to unleash largely unknown micro-herbicides such as Fusarium oxysporum domestically--in Florida! In 1999, NORML wrote a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the 'Drug Czar' of Florida seeking info about his office's intent to, with little to no public warning or discussion, unleash Fusarium oxysporum in an important commercial and agriculturally diverse state. (http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=4027)

Thankfully, credible scientists and pathogen experts and not wild-eyed prohibitionist law enforcement agencies prevailed in not contaminating Florida with an uncontrollable micro herbicide.

Read NORML's testimony against governmental efforts to unleash biological warfare on the cannabis species. (http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=4401)

Lastly, the US government (and its private/corporate mercinary armies from DynCorp and soon Blackwater USA) claimed to have already significantly reduced the South American coca crop via chemical and biological warfare...if this is so, why are products like cocaine/crack (and cannabis) so ubiquitously available in the US (and Europe) after more than 70 years of government-imposed prohibition?

"He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them."
Spinoza

Check out NORML's cannabis law reform advocacy and information @ www.norml.org

[Jack King]

If the USA would just enter all-output contracts with Afghan poppy farmers, we could support the Afghan economy while depriving al Qaida of a significant source of income, not to mention generating support in the hearts and minds of rural Afghanis, who have been growing quantities of opium-producing quantities since Roman times. However, our allies, Turkey and India, who grow almost 100 percent of the legal opium in the global economy might object, and we quiver in our boots at the thought of upsetting the legal opium trade by bringing a third partner in. So much for respect for indiginous culture.

[Kevin Zeese]

How many times are we going to repeat the same mistakes? It is amazing the short memory we have for these "destroy them at the source" schemes. They consistently make the drug problem worse, not better.

The paraquat spraying program, mentioned in an earlier post, was used to destroy marijuana and poppies growing in Mexico in the late 1970s. Not only do we still get marijuana and heroin from Mexico, but that effort expanded the marijuana market to Colombia and North America (U.S. and Canada) and heroin to southeast Asia. Now the the highest quality marijuana in the world is produced in North America and heroin is ten times purer than in the 70s.

And, the expansion of the marijuana market to Colombia led to the Colombian cocaine market that caused so many problems in the 1980's -- the cocaine decade. How? When the marijuana market expanded, it led to "square groupers" (marijuana bales) washing up on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico in the U.S. Pres. Reagan reacted by calling out the military. They were great at catching the relatively slow speed boats that got the square grouper dropped from Colombian plans. So, the Colombians switched to the less bulky, easier to hide cocaine. Presto -- a cocaine epidemic in the U.S.

Now, the Colombian drug war, known as Plan Colombia, is trying to "detroy it at its source" and the same strategy is getting the same result! Now, cocaine is being reported in neighborhing countries - Venezuela was recently mentioned (no doubt Hillary Clinton will create Plan Venezuela and forcibly send U.S. troops in to "destroy it at its source"). And, we're seeing more meth -- man made speed -- in the U.S. to add to the stimulant market.

Detroy it at its source is a sure recipe for new drugs, new drug markets, new drug sources and new drug traffickers -- on the street more dangerous drugs and more drug problems. And, while we're chasing all those "new" drug activities the old ones join in the drug trade as well.

Prohibition expands the problem because it cannot compete with the reality of economics -- supply and demand. We need to bring drugs within the law, regulate and control them. No doubt there will still be problems but much less than any prohibition strategy whether it is destroy it at its source, seize it before it arrives, arrest the dealers, arrest the users, fill the prisons. They have all been tried over and over with the same result -- a bigger, more dangerous problem.

Nixon declared the drug war in 1968 -- Have we won it yet? Are we winning it? Will more of the same ever win it?

Kevin Zeese
President, Common Sense for Drug Policy (www.csdp.org).

[Patrick]

Thanks to Kevin for giving us a highly relevant history lesson here. I think there are many instances in the war on drugs when tactics have had unintended consequences. btw, KZ
is also a former Green Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, if I recall correctly.

[Daniel Klaisner]

Well chuck i agree when you say that this would be a better tactic than the war on drugs, but you still need to keep in mind that drugs are here and they arent going anywhere no matter what. The source we must pay more attention to is our youth. For instance in high school you see all of these photos of drug users and the true bad side of the drugs. So why not instead of telling young children that drugs are just bad we show them the true side of things. You may be saying oh this is much to graphic for them to see but maybe thats what kids need. Im not saying this is the what will fix the problems of drugs, but maybe the simple solutions are the ones that will.

[Cliff Schaffer]

I suggest a simpler solution. We pass a law that requires lawmakers to have some clue what they are talking about, and able to pass an elementary quiz on the subject before they are allowed to vote on any drug law. As President Nixon's US National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse said in 1973, the real problem is the ignorance of the public officials who have never bothered to read the most basic research. You can read their report at http://druglibrary.org/schaffer under Major Studies of Drugs and Drug Policy.

If one is even asking "is this a good idea?" then it is obvious that they have never read the Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs at http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm. This is the best overall review of the drug problem ever written. It contains an excellent history of the drugs and the laws that surround them. In short, the laws made most of the problems. Drug prohibition has been a disaster since it was first declared in 1914.

If you thought this War On Some Drugs was all about public health and safety, you have been bamboozled. The US Federal Government has had a dedicated and deliberate program of lying about drugs since at least 1925. (See http://druglibrary.org/special/king/king1.htm for example.)

This policy doesn't survive ten minutes in any open and honest debate. This argument has been over on the Internet for at least ten years. If you can find any prohibitionist who is willing to publicly defend these policies in an open and honest debate, call me immediately. The fact that they won't even stand for a fair public discussion ought to tell you something about these policies right there.

[Patrick]

It's interesting that we haven't had a lot of supporters of the biowar idea show up here. I think I'll try to invite some of the proponents to post.

[Mikel]

GOD created nature, humans abuse life

[Gary Mosebar]

Why are we spending so much money on this "WAR ON DRUGS"! Can't we spend this money on more important things {feeding poor, heathcare, SSDI, ECT, ECT, ECT!} and make these drugs legal and TAX them!?!? We sure are good at taxing things! I agree with Daniel! And Patrick you may be right; however it should be MY FREE CHOICE to abuse it!!!

[Patrick]

Here's a link to a 2004 briefing paper from the Transactional Institute, an international environmental activist group.
http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?page=policybriefings_brief7

btw, one of these days I'm going to figure out HTML, so I can imbed these links. Agggh.

[Brain C., MInnesota]

This is the worst idea I've heard in a very long time.

When you administer herbicide directly you spray the plant, it dies, end of transaction. Glyphosate has ill environmental and health effects, but that's due to the breakdown products. You can sparingly use glyphosate to great benefit. Plastering Columbia isn't an example of that.

When you employ a fungus to apply herbicide for you, you've taken the task out of human hands. There is simply no way of telling what that fungus will do once it goes wild. It could decimate human food crops, or wreak havoc ecologically.

That's a bad enough idea as is. When you pair it up with the mind-numbingly ineffective band-aid cancer treatment that is the war on drugs, you're talking about a deep seated idiocy that neccesitates dropping out of the gene pool. (if you drink enough glyphosate you'll be sterile!)

[Patrick]

I bet it tastes terrible, too...

[concerned citizen]

I believe that addictive substances cause great problems in the world.
However, in USA, the economy is based on capitalism and corporatism. That coupled with a country on the brink of economic collapse brings about a need for 100s of billions of dollars per year of liquid cash flow to be laundered through the world trade and banking systems. This brings us to CIA protected and assisted drug smuggling. This is an economic necessity, without it, economic collapse seems eminent. If you want to get rid of drugs with minimal problems for the economy we might consider changing the foundation of our economy to something that does not require drug and weapon monies to survive. Watch Mike Ruppert's "The Truth and Lies of 9/11".
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8797525979024486145
The movie explains the events that lead up to 9/11 type attack and also tells of more problems to come. Mike does a great job avoiding speculative topics, while at the same time drawing a map of the terrain which must be navigated if humanity is to last through the Post-Oil-Production-Era.
GOD=GOLD, OIL, and DRUGS.

[Joseph Lee]

I am all for biowarfare against drugs. There are risks of course, but the alternatives so far are not working. Sure, there can be plenty of collateral damage to human and environment, but that is the lesser evil. Lives are already been destroyed in the US because of narcotics and by all measure, all efforts so far are but in vain. So, the question is, destroy evil, or let evil destroy us. Talking about getting permission to use mycoherbicides, well, I'd say, just do it. If the US can attack Iraq against world opinion, who cares about the lives of those who thrive on other people's miseries. Bad guys don't count. I would even go as far to suggest that the US employ covet operations to secretly spread the organism and then let it loose. Do it, for the sake of our children and their children.

[thailand budget hotels]

Nice Post I already digged this

[Realist]

“REALLITY” It’s the answer to the war. Provide security cut off the money to the insurgents and we will achieve victory in the region.

[Observation]

Really bad journalism. None of the groups or individuals involved represent "official" positions.

What you have for both US and UN positions are private pharmaceutical and herbicide companies cloaking their actions via name dropping. At best the named people are running interference to keep these private actions from being interdicted by normal nationwide political processes.

Only a handful of top pharmaceutical companies are able to replace these natural drugs with totally synthetic substitutes. So huge profits can be made if these natural drug sources are eliminated. These drugs and plants have wide legitimate uses in 2nd and 3rd world countries and even form the basis of raw materials for many less sophisticated synthetic medical drug company products in 1st world countries.

That is the Congressmen do not have approved legislation nor even bills in process to authorize this stuff. Basically they are spouting their own personal views without hope of approval. They may have executive oversight but so far no executive action has been taken for fear of popular repercussions when other divergent views on the same oversight committee would release "official" action to the public.

[Observation]

As for drug abuse itself... Not something that can be eliminated at the source. People will simply seek substitutes ---either substitute sources or substitutes for the drugs themselves.

If you really want to do something the ONLY interdiction is at the end-user.

Simplest being some sort of radical lose of rights --- probably the most humane being a loss of mental competence declaration with face tattoo and consequent loss of drivers license, etc.

However, the best method would be the brain microchip that detects drug induced brain stimulus and set off the appropriate alert. This would allow law enforcement to be very graduated from ticket to institutionalization or execution over long periods of time. Best of all it could turn off automobile and other machinery operation which endangers the public.