America’s Budgetary Challenge

By offering other nations a narcotics dividend they realize though our favors to them, they can hardly condone behavior that would exclude them from joining a coalition of the decent. This initiative can be the creative genius of our own new diplomacy. All they have to do is support the mission philosophically and sit back and clip their dividend coupons. Even the French should find no disdain for such an unexpected windfall. The United States has a new Secretary of State. What better a defining mission than a world set on a better, more hopeful trajectory?

How can it happen?

Drilling for Oil

It is not a difficult stretch of imagination to note that narcotics producing nations are among the poorest of the poor. It is also generally a safe bet to assume that either such nations have few natural resources that can be extracted from the earth, or that the chaotic, corrupt political environments have not made it possible to utilize what resources are otherwise available. For example, Nigeria has significant oil opportunities, but is hampered by monumental corruption.

Let’s make use of this oil metaphor and suggest that narcotics have become the oil wells of the poor. With a minimum of effort they can extract the greatest potential return from the soil. We will reserve judgment as to whether what they extract is a benefit to humankind. They use their often barren soils to cultivate what can bring the greatest extractive return, exchanging the higher rate of return offered for narcotics to take the place of resources not otherwise available.(or undeveloped) We can afford to give them an equivalent rate-of-return on their poor soils for not extracting their oil substitute. We can make more sustainable growth a reality for them in the future, along with education, better health practices and greater support for democratic institutions. They, in turn, will be providing the money from voluntary non-extraction practices to earn our support.

Carrying Water for the Thirsty—Drilling a New Well

Just how might we produce the narcotics dividend upon which this paper is built?

We will enrich the environment. Colleagues of mine have developed soil inoculants capable of preventing the cultivation of pre-selected narcotics producing plants. The opium poppy and coca shrub are among them. We have also overcome prior objections to consideration of their use: that they are detrimental to humans, animals, non-targeted plants and the environment.

How is this possible? Through the miracles of science we have, through both trial-and-error and rapid advances in both genetics and agricultural biotechnology, been able to satisfy the adverse claims, (mostly from non-scientists and non-biotechnologists) that soil inoculation with mycoherbicides is unproven technology. To the contrary, it holds many superior advantages over current aerial spraying of fields with glyphosate.

Some important distinctions are these: mycoherbicide soil inoculation against pre-selected organisms are somewhat like a child’s measles inoculation, in that it protects against an unwanted organism for an extended period of future time. In this case, soil inoculation does not have to take place on an annual basis, an important economic advantage. Second, mycoherbicides prevent cultivation of only the targeted organism, while glyphosate kills all emergent growth, including emergent food crops. In poor countries, this is a serious drawback, both economically and in terms of human well-being..

Glyphosate has become so politically difficult, for example, that although Afghan President Hamid Karzai repeatedly says fighting the booming opium trade is his top priority, (because of the threat of his nation becoming a narco-state) he also cites human heath risks as potential side effects as a reason to explain his opposition to spraying glyphosate on poppy fields. This concern is in a nation being destroyed by narcotics cultivation. Mycoherbicide soil inoculation is a human-friendly response.

Furthermore, Joshua Davis has recently reported in Wired.com, a narco-terror response,'The Mystery of the Coca Plant that Wouldn't Die,' the development of (RR) resistant coca, which in the future may render glyphosate ineffective against narcotics.

As an alternative, soil inoculation (ground or aerial) using safe mycoherbicides can eliminate present concerns, It can also provide a safe means to avoid reprisals against those engaged in hand eradication efforts. In the case of both Afghanistan and Colombia, humans are also put at risk by efforts at hand-eradication.

Farmers can receive vouchers in exchange for not planting designated areas. In theory, of course, one could receive a voucher in exchange for fallow fields, providing plantings were not moved elsewhere or planted despite prior agreements and/or vouchers. In order to keep intent consistent with results it seems that treating suitable fields in advance is the only way to guarantee compliance against the circumvention of intent.

The elimination of the Afghan poppy crop through soil inoculation would both clear the political path and create the financial means to provide hard-to-come-by development funds to cash strapped Afghanistan. The warlords, druglords and terror elements would object, of course, but they would object to any effective form of eradication, which is why they must be recognized as the major obstacles to democracy and rule of law that they are.

The EU narcotics dividend alone for opium is huge, as Afghan opium saturates their markets.

For America to decisively end the flow of terrorist funding from Afghan poppies would justify ongoing Afghan development funding in the magnitude of $10 billion dollars annually, which is three to four times the current US level of investment. Increased funding would be justified through Afghanistan’s own cooperative effort. It is an offer too hard to refuse. Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA) has been a vocal supporter for the support of democratization with more American dollars. I agree. Here is a way to back that support in Congress.

The benefits to Afghanistan are huge, but reducing the death and destruction brought on by narcotics funded terror are a bonus plus to both Afghanistan and the United States.

Finally, this is a plan in which producer nations can recognize the incentive to cooperate. In terms of making more diplomatic efforts, we have a means to address both mutual concerns and mutual benefits in a way that promises both real results and real money.

As to implementing the actual soil inoculations, application can also be done cooperatively, even though the specific bio-herbicide inoculants have been developed by American scientists. Nonetheless, it can be applied quickly, safely and with the mutual participation of principals.

This is the best advice I have to offer as to how to make seeming barren soil productive—to turn poor land into found money. I have tried to show how such a policy implementation might be presented, who will benefit and how. I have tried to show the economic impact benefits. I am hoping that policymakers with both courage and vision will see enough by reading between the lines that they will earn their own way forward by crossing any uncrossed t’s and dotting the missing i’s.

Many people have cautioned me that those in government won’t respond or try to fill in the gaps if you haven’t thought of everything. I haven’t and they must. Even the most ungrateful politician should feel good about finding a few hundred billion dollars once thought lost. It doesn’t take alchemy, a free lunch, or a perpetual motion machine to find—just using tools and found money already at hand. After all, as Senator Dirksen said: “A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”

Good luck. I’ll be willing to help in any way possible.

—Walton Cook is the author of the political thriller, Buzzword, a novel of biotechnology applied against the cultivation of narcotics producing plants.

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