Obama and opium in Afghanistan

The Obama administration is shifting policy on drugs in Afghanistan, moving away from crop eradication and promoting alternative livelihoods. This will be welcome by most analysts, as spraying just makes it harder for poor farmers to generate income, and when crops are eradicated in some area, more planting of poppies happens in another area to compensate anyway.
Richard Holbrooke, the special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said President Barack Obama's administration was making "significant adjustments" from the previous George W. Bush team. "We are downgrading our efforts to eradicate crops -- spraying -- a policy we think is totally ineffectual," Holbrooke testified before Congress.
Critics, even within the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan, have feared that the United States was pushing impoverished peasants into the Taliban.
Holbrooke said the Obama administration was also ramping up agricultural aid to provide Afghans with alternative livelihoods.