One of the idiocies behind the current (deteriorating) situation in Afghanistan has been the way that the weird preoccupations of the “war on drugs” have been allowed to prevail over the need to bring some sort of stability to the country, despite the repeated warnings that such an approach was going to cause trouble. Now, the Guardian reports, a senior Conservative MP has entered the fray:

Opposition whip Tobias Ellwood said that the lives of British troops in the south of the country were being endangered because of the coalition’s insistence on eradicating opium crops, which are often the sole means of livelihood for impoverished families in the region. Six British soldiers have died in Helmand province over the past six weeks, most in the former opium market town of Sangin where they are fighting a fierce insurgency of Taliban warlords who have gained the support of local farmers. “The poppy crops are the elephant in the room of the Afghan problem. We’re in complete denial of the power that the crops have on the nation as a whole, and the tactics of eradication are simply not working,” Mr Ellwood told Guardian Unlimited. “Last year we spent £600m on eradication and all that resulted was the biggest-ever export of opium from the country.” He said that opium farming should be licensed so that the harvest could be sold legally on the open market, bringing in income for Afghan farmers and helping to plug a global shortage of opiate-based medicines. The plan would also limit the supply of opium to the black market, where it finds its way into Britain as heroin, he said. Mr Ellwood said the plan had the support of several Conservative MPs and senior military figures in Afghanistan.

Commonsense at last.