From the AP by NICOLE WINFIELD US announces big shift in Afghanistan drug policy

The U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, told the AP that the U.S. eradication programs were only driving Afghan farmers into the hands of the Taliban.

"Eradication is a waste of money," Holbrooke said on the sidelines of a Group of Eight foreign ministers' meeting on Afghanistan, during which he briefed regional representatives on the new policy.

"It might destroy some acreage, but it didn't reduce the amount of money the Taliban got by one dollar. It just helped the Taliban. So we're going to phase out eradication," he said. The Afghan foreign minister also attended the G-8 meeting.
Afghanistan is the world's leading source of opium, cultivating 93 percent of the world's heroin-producing crop. While opium cultivation dropped 19 percent last year, it remains concentrated in Afghanistan's southern provinces where the Taliban is strongest and earned insurgents an estimated $50 million to $70 million last year, according to the U.N. drug office.
To fight it, he (U.N. drug chief Antonio Maria Costa) said major powers had to expand their counter-drug efforts to neighboring Pakistan as well as Iran, where half the 7,000 tons of exported Afghan opium transits, "causing the highest addiction rate in the world."