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America’s Drug Enforcement Agency or the DEA is sending agents to Afghanistan in an attempt to close down the countries’ opium industry. The DEA says they have 13 agents in Afghanistan now - that number will be about 80 by 2010.

Afghanistan’s poppy problem has haunted the U.S. for years with the crop funding Taliban operations and providing 93% of the world’s opium.

We’re examining different media perspectives on the strategy to win the war against the opium industry that funds the Taliban.

NPR correspondent Tom Bowman says the DEA agents will work like police SWAT teams to target drug lords and traffickers.

“Now this is a serious change in policy, before this it used to be crop eradication was a U.S. government policy, burning the poppy fields, for example. Now they found that only helped the Taliban and major traffickers, it drove up the price of opium and it also hurt the farmers many of whom were indebted to the Taliban.”

CBS News has a perspective on why NATO’s last strategy failed. They interview Norine MacDonald from charity ‘The Senlis Council’ for insight.

“I’ve talked to elderly people who you know said they might as well as have run over me with a tractor cos how am I going to feed my family. For the last three years Norine MacDonald has lived amongst southern Afghans and seen the U.S. poppy policy backfire she says, from the ground up, watching farmers who had their fields wiped out switch their sympathies to the Taliban.”

Leave the poppy fields alone is the message from Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair’s Contributing Editor. Back in 2006, he suggested the following on MSNBC.

“I think we should be paying them to grow the opium that we need for our pain-killer market. It has to be grown somewhere. Currently I believe it’s grown for us in Turkey why don’t we give the Afghan’s a share of that business and stop pretending that we aren’t the main consumers even of the illegal narcotics as well as long as that’s true, as long as poor countries can grow it and rich customers want it the drug war, the drug trade will go on and the war against it is nonsense.”

The Huffington Post freelancer Stewart Nusbaumer looks at the history of the U.S. strategy against drugs in Afghanistan – saying from his experience there never was a drug eradication policy.

“When I was in Farah and Helmand Provinces several months ago, I was struck by how careful our troops were in not stepping on a single blooming poppy. Actually, their sensitivity for Afghan entrepreneurs and concern for the junkies in the West was quite stunning.”

The New York Times shows that even if the DEA takes out the countries’ opium industry there’s a new enemy on the horizon.

“Mohammed works 3 acres of land and like many farmers in [inaud] he’s recently switched from growing opium poppy to growing cannabis. A plant these villagers already knew well. Our fathers and grandfathers cultivated hashish."

“Cannabis cultivation is a local tradition here, but what’s new is the rise in the amount grown. As the poppy has faded the cannabis has spread not just in [inaud] province but throughout Afghanistan.”

Should the U.S. tackle the drug lords SWAT-stye? Stick with crop eradication? Or do you think opium should be sourced from Afghanistan for use in pharmaceuticals?