GOT A PHONE CALL FROM MICHAEL YON tonight. He’s back from Afghanistan, and says he’s really happy to be back in the States. He also reports that the Bill Roggio item I linked earlier is exactly right, and that the opium crop in Afghanistan is swelling. He’s a big fan of some of the alternative crop efforts there, though it’s hard for me to imagine that many crops could compete economically with opium. I’m still not sure why the United States doesn’t start buying the stuff from farmers, which at the very least would drive up prices and put the squeeze on the warlords. Anyway, it was nice to hear that he’s doing well, and we’ll try to get him on another podcast soon. (Our earlier interview with Yon, if you missed it, is here.)

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman rains on my buy-the-opium idea: “It’s an old idea. We tried to buy Khun Sa’s crop in the late 60s. It never works. The market defeats it every time.”

Dang, supply-and-demand! Well, an even better solution would be drug legalization, of course. Then they could sell to Pfizer, not to organized crime. Kleiman has more here.