Sorry, I had limited time to type out that particular comment, so I didn't have the time to place a footnote there that would offer a more nuanced view.
No, we don't all want to get rid of drug cultivation. We do all want to ensure that substance abuse doesn't affect our lives and our families. Of course, that's a vague sentiment and it's hard to get everyone to agree on the specifics of what it means. That didn't stop certain politicians from exploiting that and manipulating general opinion and passing laws and foreign policies that ended up creating a whole lot of suffering for a whole lot of people in different parts of the world.
As a result, there's a whole lot of systemic oppression involved in drug cultivation these days. Unlike child labor, it's not the drug cultivation itself that we should strive to get rid of, but that doesn't negate my original point, which is that just trying to solve the problem in the most direct way possible is going to make things worse.
If you think about it, the other two examples I gave can also be adapted to become something that isn't pernicious in and of itself. If you legalize prostitution and make it a safe profession that adults can choose, instead of resorting to out of necessity, then sex tourism isn't necessarily something you want to get rid of. Similarly, if my kid wants to mow neighborhood lawns to get some money or sell lemonade or babysit other kids, that's not the kind of child labor we're trying to get rid of.
Going back to the topic of drug cultivation, I would recommend reading "Lacrónica" by Martín Caparrós. In one of the chapters, he describes the situation in Bolivia in 1991. One of the many things that fascinated me in his account was the fact that, at that time, a farmer could get 100-150 bolivianos (local currency) for a hand-carried load of coca leaves or 1 boliviano for a hundred oranges. That meant that, to make the same amount of money for one load of coca, a farmer would have to sell 15,000 oranges and there's no way -- even if there's enough demand -- to carry 15,000 oranges in one trip.
I mention this because I think it's a fascinating insight into the systemic oppression I've been talking about. These farmers were not getting rich off their drug cultivation. On the contrary, they lived in quite precarious conditions and they had to cultivate coca leaves to be able to feed themselves and their families.
So yeah, maybe we don't all want get rid of all drug cultivation, but we definitely want to get rid of it in its present form.
