Dangers of drug eradication in Afghanistan

This article from MSNBC illustrates the hardships suffered by poor Afghan farmers who see their poppy fields destroyed by the government in an effort to eliminate opium cultivation.
It is a good article which shows that eradicating poppy fields is not the best solution to Afghanistan's drug problem, because once the farmers have their fields destroyed they simply become even poorer and villages lack the important income brought by opium cultivation.
The better solution is to tackle the big traffickers who make substantial profits and transport the drugs across Afghanistan and export it to other countries. Those traffickers are wealthy and are big fish, so arresting them would deal much more effectively with the drugs problem without attacking farmers, at least not as drastically and quickly (the farmers would have time to shift to other crops and economic activities if they received funding for what's called "alternative livelihoods" programs).