It's about how willing that society is to sanction the external stimulation of internal physiological systems which have been with us for rather a long time through evolution. Millions of years before Homo Sapiens, in fact.

All such external stimulation, as far as I know, alters, produces, or reduces the balance of naturally occurring 'transmitters' - mostly directly in the brain, but a few have indirect effects. These transmitters can be hormones, semi-homones, neuro-transmitters etc. Not all of them have an opioidergic effect, but all those described as 'addictive' appear to.

So whether we are talking about 'natural' substances such as beer, bourbon, cocoa leaves, kiff, dope, opium, cannabis, yage, or synthetic substances such as LSD, amphetamines, or exstacy, or behaviours such as thrill-seeking, sex, love, pain etc - they are all part of the same continuum of personal modulation.

And all of these are cultural modulations as well. Many of them going back thousands, if not tens of thousands of years. Witness the evidence for cocaine and nicotine in 5000 year old Egyptian mummies - neither plant being indegenous to North Africa and thus implying trade across the Atlantic at the time.

Thus I don't quite see how demand can be reduced for modulation - only shifted to another modulator. Modulation or 'mind-bending' or whatever you wish to call it, is as natural to humans as eating (which might also be considered as modulation, at least in part, because we get much more than simply energy out of food). I might even go to a typical trilo sweeping statement and say that it is the repression of such personal modulation that is abnormal.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Really?
Spending money on economic aid should be easier to justify and cheaper than sending more troops, which Europe has started to do in recent years. Slowly.

If we legalised drugs, would our heroin consumption go down? Would the warlords be less in control of what would then become a legal cash crop?

Who speaks for Afghans? What do Afghans want? If I were an Afghan farmer maybe I would want to be able to grow the quite profitable poppy crop legally without being blamed for Europe's drug abuse problems. But I don't know, I am not an Afghan, I don't play one on TV, and I don't know any either.

Is there a single Afghan people? Does it speak with a united voice? Is there an alternative group within the Pashtun people that could be empowered instead of the Taliban? What do Afghanistan's neighbours, who all have Afghan ethnic allies, want or intend? How legitimate is Karzai? What is he saying he wants?

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides

"I wrote that Europe has been the biggest consumer of opium from Afghanistan for many years. Thus Europe financed the Taleban (before they prohibited opium) and the warlords -- still today"

Are you certain that Europe really is the largest consumer of Afghani opiates?

Heroin Use
Of the estimated 9.2 million heroin users in the world, 61% lived in Asia, 15% in Europe, 13% in the Americas, 6% in Oceania and 5% in Africa. These represent between 0.12 % and 0.22% of the population of these continents.

Back in 2004, when it was still believed possible to achieve a major cutback in Afghani opium production:

Preliminary analysis suggests that the consumption effects will be greatest in Iran, Pakistan and other nations near Afghanistan, moderate in Western Europe and small in the United States.

Which means that most of Afghanistan's opium crop ends up in neighbouring countries (Iran, Pakistan, India, Central Asia..) a smaller part goes to fuel European addiction-rates including Russia's, and a still-smaller percentage makes its way to the US market.  

And oppiate addiction seems to be poverty-linked,for instance it's risen to epidemic-level amongst Afghani refugees in Pakistan. Russia, the CIS and Eastern Europe are also major heroin destinations - thanks to those "post-privatisation blues"?

In Russia, heroin consumption literally sky-rocketed in the course of 1999, increasing four and a half fold between June-July 1998 and the same period in 1999, while the number of HIV infections recorded doubled in 1999, mainly due t intravenous drug use. However, it has been estimated that the sudden massive increase in heroin addiction and in the incidence o HIV/AIDS in the oblast of Irkutsk, which has by now been deeply penetrated by the Tadjik trafficking networks, is probably one of the most serious examples of this process in the whole of Russia.
The rapid spread of heroin consumption i the countries crossed by the expanding narcotrafficking routes is a new and damaging process. At first, the traffickers begin transporting opiates along the main lines of communication, which quickly become new narcotrafficking routes. As they go, they lead to the consumption of opium and heroin, which become widely adopted by the population in these regions, and addictive practices soon take root. The traffic then tends to increase in volume and propagates all the more readily since the countries along the drug route have growing numbers of consumers, who are also potential small-time smugglers.