Pharmaceutical poppies in Alberta? I’m all for rural diversification, but really – shouldn’t we be importing the stuff from Afghanistan? It’s a question others are asking;
The buds of millions of poppy flowers are swelling across Afghanistan. In the far southern provinces bordering Iran, the harvest will start later this month. By mid- May the fields around British military camps in Helmand will be ringing to the sound of scythes, rather than gunfire.
And this year’s opium harvest will almost certainly be the largest ever. In the five years since the overthrow of the Taliban regime, land under cultivation for poppy has grown from 8,000 to 165,000 hectares.
The US wants to step up eradication programmes, crop-spraying from the air. But, desperate to win “hearts and minds” in Afghanistan and protect British troops, Tony Blair is on the brink of a U-turn that will set him on a collision course with President George Bush.
The Prime Minister has ordered a review of his counter-narcotics strategy – including the possibility of legalising some poppy production – after an extraordinary meeting with a Tory MP on Wednesday, The Independent on Sunday has learnt. Tobias Ellwood, a backbencher elected less than two years ago, has apparently succeeded where ministers and officials have failed in leading Mr Blair to consider a hugely significant switch in policy.
Supporters of the measure say it would not only curb an illegal drugs trade which supplies 80 per cent of the heroin on Britain’s streets, but would hit the Taliban insurgency and help save the lives of British troops. Much of the legally produced drug could be used to alleviate a shortage of opiates for medicinal use in Britain and beyond, they say.
[…]
A spokesman for No 10 said that Mr Blair agreed to consider the idea, and would reply before Easter, adding: “The Prime Minister did note there were doubts about the capacity of the Afghan government in this regard.”
Mr Ellwood said: “It is ironic that the world, including Britain, experiences a shortage of diamorphine and codeine, but we choose to prevent the fourth poorest country in the world from producing it. Instead we are destroying the crops, alienating communities who then seek support from the Taliban. Five years since the invasion, peace remains a distant hope. Until the issue of poppy crops is solved, the fragile umbrella of security will never be strong enough for long-term reconstruction and development initiatives to take root.”
That’s right. There’s a shortage of the stuff. Meanwhile, poppy growing seems to be the one thing Afghanis are really good at and we’re trying to stop them from doing it.
With all the millions in foreign aid being poured into the country to plant the seeds for a stable economy, why wouldn’t rechanneling Afghanistan opium towards the legitimate pharmaceutical industry be the number one priority on the order paper?
Surely the problems in achieving legal commercialization of the crop can only pale against the problems created by eradicating it.
(COMMENTS NOTE: Please stay on topic. This is not an invitation for a debate on the pros and cons of legalizing recreational drug use.)
This seems like a no brainer to me. It is the one area of conservative (I use the small c because I’m talking about the philosophy not the party) policy that I think is off the mark.
Globally, decriminalizing drugs would take away the profit and organized criminal element involved. Alcohol prohibition in the 20’s proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt. The rise of the Mafia is directly related to prohibition. And specifically w.r.t. Afghanistan, I don’t see why we don’t buy their poppy crops. We have a need for them for legitimate uses and by buying the crop we keep them from being turned into illegal drugs on the streets. We prevent the Taliban from having a source of income. We provide income to Afghani farmers.
American based drug policy is wrong.
as soon as the word “drugs” comes into the conversation, certain people just turn to idiots….I have met people who literally chug whisky, yet if they know of someone smoking a joint, that person is a deviant drug addict…pure hypocrisy, and it is keeping us from making rational choices as far as our drug policies are concerned….I mean, really, as a parent who consumes alcohol, does one really think they have any credibility lecturing on other drugs????
Outstanding post, Kate.
I’m a social and economic conservative, but having lived and worked in Latam (especially Peru) for quite a few years, I have seen the destructive effects of criminalization on the producing countries and have long been in favour of legalization and regulation of all products routinely consumed by humans.
I agree completely with this idea. There is no way that poppy cultivation can ever be eradicated in Afghanistan, unless the crop is to be entirely replaced by other profitable cash crop, a strategy which was successfully undertaken over a period in Thailand because the initiative was driven by the King of Thailand, who is an US trained agriculturalist. But we know that this will never happen in Afghanistan. But, if the western powers decide to pay Afghani farmers for their poppies, and use this crop for medicinal purposes, this will go a long way to building bridges and loyalties with the farmers, and will undermine the Taliban’s influence. After, the people mainly just want to make a living and support their families, not live under a repressive fanatic islamic government.
I don’t think that the rise of the mafia is directly related to alcohol prohibition. The mafia existed long before its prohibition and are quite alive and well long after its non-prohibition.
I can see the point of purchasing the Afghan crop for medicinal uses. But, what about the non-medicinal uses? The fact is, there IS a non-medicinal use and the problem with its usage is that it renders its users incapable of constructive participation in the society and capable only of destruction. Yes, it’s the same with serious alcohol use. We therefore control its production, purchase and use, in so far as we can. That doesn’t eliminate criminal involvement in alcohol – after all, any and all activities are open to criminal economics.
But – Is there any such thing as a ‘controlled drug usage’? Is it possible to legalize drug production, purchase and use?
Don’t misinterpret my post. I am in no way advocating decriminalization or legalization of recreational drug use.
However, there is a legitimate market for this crop.
(The argument that legalization starves organized crime is false, and no – the prohibition example doesn’t support it, or we’d have no organized crime today. These people engage in high risk, high return criminal enterprises because they’re criminals, not because they secretly wish to live regular lives as used car dealers. Legalize pot and they’ll simply ratchet up the volume on human smuggling, crystal meth, whatever brings in the big bucks. It’s like pushing on a balloon. The fact that substance abuse is a problem without any ultimate solutions does not logically lead to removing all curbs and controls – otherwise, we might as well legalize break and enters, too.)
That said, this isn’t the debate on this thread, so please, stick to the topic.
Turkey had a similar issue in the ’60’s and ’70’s when they were supposed to be the main country growing poppies.
They went to a licencing system, where poppy farmers were licenced to grow poppies and sell them to a gov’t agency, at a profit, which then in turn had agreements with other gov’ts to sell for medicinal purposes. It turned out to work very well.
I think this is what is going to end up happening in Afghanistan – it has been discussed quite a bit already.
To Afghanis, poppies are a cash crop, just like any other, and they need the money. The problem is having people realize that they can sell their crop to the gov’t instead of al queda types. Money stays in the country and helps the country grow.
In fact, it could be the start of a drug industry in Afghanistan – instead of selling raw materials to American companies – they should start getting into the higher end production of opium based medicines.
ET:
True the Mafia was around pre-prohibition. However, if you study their history, they didn’t have the power that they achieved (hence my use of “rise”) because of prohibition. And since prohibition has been repealled they’ve gotten into the business of other prohibited substances.
The question is: If we legalize the purchase of poppies from Afghanistan what will the libs do? Will they happy that we found a stable response to the poppy growing issue, or will they start chanting “No Blood for Opiates!”?
Will we have to adjust Bush’s nametag to read Bushitler Halliburton Pfizer McChimpy? I need to know so I get the new shirts made.
I’m with Kate and cconn on this one. This could be a really good solution for the Afghanistan economy. I’m against recreational drug use but putting drug into pills and have them prescribed by doctors is fine with me. Keeping the industry in Afghanistan under effective controls may solve the war in more ways than one.
We should be doing this by now. Legitimizing the trade and using the opiates as medicine will undercut the drug trade and possibly put some money in the pockets of the farmers.
Before Bin Laden became the number one guy on the FBI list, he was actually the world leader in opium production for illegal trade and made millions of dollars off it.
Interesting post to say the least. The idea to turn the poppy fields into a legitimate crop would certainly make sense, especially since there is a real need for the product. The fact that there will likely be some corruption in the business is a given but I dare say that the farmer will get more for his crop than the drug runners would give him, and probably get to keep his head at the same time.
I agree, this isn’t a pro or con drugs post but rather trying to turn a negative into a positive. The Afghanistan farmer doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the philosophical debate but rather putting food on the family table.
Yeah, they could set up a marketing agency modeled after the Canadian Wheat Board. A single desk seller of poppies. The Afgan Poppy Board. Ken Ritter could go over and lend his expertise in Monopoly marketing. He will soon have more free time.
T’is not the Mafia in dugs that would present the biggest problem to the “suggestion” put forth, but the CIA’s invovlment in things illegal may be a problem, as they need to raise money for things they do not want the government to know they are involved in, they are the power behind the power. Just ask Bush the elder!!
It does seem to be easier just to BUY the stuff, doesn’t it? If you purchase the whole crop, the farmers will probably be thrilled to let your soldiers come and supervise the harvest, maybe even cart the stuff away for you.
Particularly if the alternative to selling to the government is a nice jail cell and losing your land. Get some carrot/stick action going, the problem could be solved in a few years. God forbid the nation of Afghanistan should have a source of income other than Canadian/US tax dollars.
Its like the old saw about guns. Poppies don’t kill people, drug dealers do.
Afghanistan related:
Decision on Use of Tanks in Afghanistan Coming Soon
Josh Pringle
Monday, April 2, 2007
The commander of the army branch of the Canadian Armed Forces says a decision on the future of the Leopard Two tanks in Afghanistan will be made soon.
Lieutenant General Andrew Leslie told troops in Kandahar that the Prime Minister is expected to make a decision.
The heat of the desert summer is coming and the machines don’t have air conditioning.
Leslie says if they are replaced: “thank God.”
General Leslie gets a big Amen to the Leopard 2.
Survivability shouldn’t depend on 30 year old kit.
Say: “Nice kitty!” but watch out for the claws.
Thankfully, I don’t suppose a few Lethbridge farmers would wield much of a blow to a legitimized Afghan market. Furthermore, they’re looking at morphine-less poppies for codeine only. That aside, I’m not sure how simple it would be for the Afghani farmer to switch customers. According to the article:
Opium traders hold farmers in virtual bondage through the supply of huge loans that enable families to survive through the winter.Farmers make their own opium, which is handed to traders. They pass it up the chain of command to drugs warlords who process it into heroin.
I’m not sure they could just ‘cancel that account’ because you have a new paying customer. I don’t know. The concept makes a lot of sense, it’s just hard for me to imagine it working for them without all the farmers ending up dead.
Blaming the Afghan poppy grower for our problems with drugs is like blaming video games for violence. I say let the farmer make a profit–we are supposed to be a capitalist country–surely there is someone out there bright enough to come up with a business plan?
As for the criminal element getting into the picture if the governments take over–wouldthis be the same as the OLG?
Before advocating legalizing the opium crop in Afghanistan, it would be instructive to read this post by Bruce Rolston at Flit.
Even assuming we could get Turkey and India to completely get out of the market, legal avenues for opium products would only use – at the very most – one tenth of the 165,000 hectares currently growing poppies in Afghanistan.
Legalization sounds like the right idea, until you dig into the numbers.
Its called the War Against Terror for a reason Leslie. The a-holes terrorizing the farmers are the same ones we are trying to get.
If we get the farmers on OUR side by subsidizing their crop, they will cheerfully point out the guys who need killin’.
And the best part is the drug pusher types won’t have any drug money to buy new RPGs, which will make it hard for them to shoot back.
Sun Tzu says the best battle is the one where the enemy is defeated before he even takes the field. This could be one of those. What an awesome set up.
Since there is a world shortage of legal opiates, buying the Afghan crop makes sense. Above all, it would deprive the Taliban nutbars of hard cash On the other hand, they and AQ aren’t going to sit around and let it happen. They will not be constrained by collateral casualties when they burn crops. We will need a larger military force for sure to enforce this type of arrangement. Overall, good idea, but lots of thinking and planning still required.
Let talk about the money then.
How much is the eradication costing?
Alternative 1: how much for the coalition governments to buy, sell to big pharma, and get taxes on the products from big pharma?
Alternative 2: how much to liscence or just allow big pharma to buy raw product then tax the sales of the product?
Hans
Canada does not own any Leopard II tanks, merely the 40 year old Leopard I. Is your article talking about Canada buying Leo II’s for use in Afghan or using the Leo I’s in country now in summer?
Damian, it doesn’t matter if you use it or burn it. The point is to keep it off the black market, thereby de-funding terrorists. That’d be worth a few million bucks eh?
Having a legitimate use for the stuff is a bonus, not a reason to buy it.
In a land of warlords it pays to be the strongest.The Taliban rose to power by offering protection against bandits. The current military in Afganistan needs to protect the farmers, buy their product, thus keeping it out of the hands of the Taliban. This is not rocket science it is understanding human nature. He who protects me and my family, who helps me feed my family is offered my loyalty and the loyalty of my family and my tribe. If we spit on the poppy farmers of Afganistan they will spit right back on us. If we respect their contribution to the pharmacutical industry and pay them well for their work they will see us in a different light.
Recreational drug use aside, there is a legal and legitimate use for medical opiates.
That being the case, it seems like a 12 year old could figure out the utility of creating jobs for legitimate poppy production so that the world’s poorest people can be gainfully employed beyond the dead-end job of suicide bombing.
If you allow Afghans to enter the middle class they’re less likely to join the self-detonated class.
How hard is this to understand?
The war on drugs shouldn’t be an excuse to keep legitimate enterprise down. The whole thing is assinine.
You can’t win the hearts and minds of Afghans by destroying their livelihood. In fact the hypocrisy of taking on the Taliban while imposing a Western variant of Sharia Law must be obvious.
As to the forbidden debate, one cannot decouple the prohibition of drugs from the existence of the Welfare / Nanny state. Way back when Canadians could legally pack firearms most of today’s prohibited drugs were legal. Self-responsibility has its own quid-pro-quo.
As I said, there are no complete solutions – but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Damian, it doesn’t matter if you use it or burn it. The point is to keep it off the black market, thereby de-funding terrorists. That’d be worth a few million bucks eh?
Having a legitimate use for the stuff is a bonus, not a reason to buy it.
That wasn’t quite what was being proposed, if you re-read the original post. Kate was asking why “rechanneling Afghanistan opium towards the legitimate pharmaceutical industry” wouldn’t be the number one priority. I was trying to address that question.
But if you look at the “buy and burn” argument, there are some tough roadblocks as well.
First off, it has to be a temporary strategy while you wean them off one crop and on to another. What’s the new crop, or crops? I have yet to hear an answer on that. Until there’s a plan in place to replace the opium with something else, “buy and burn” is just a welfare scheme.
More importantly, many of the Afghan farmers aren’t growing the poppy on spec – that is to say, they’re not planting and growing a crop based on the expectation that they’ll be able to sell it at harvest time. Instead, they’re either being bullied and coerced into growing it by Taliban / drug-baron thugs or being forced to grow it through borrowing. For example, a farmer doesn’t know how he’s going to feed his family for the winter, so he borrows from the local drug-lord. In exchange, the drug-lord says he has to grow a poppy crop in repayment. Tough to break that cycle when they’ll break your neck if you try to get out.
To me, the solution isn’t eradication (which simply punishes the poor farmer), and it isn’t legalization (which would only solve a tiny fraction of the overall problem, since the demand is overwhelmingly of the illegal variety). I say you need to start with the distributors – the Taliban and other profiteers who force the locals to grow opium, the guys who arrange to hump it over the mountains, the guys who process the stuff, the ones who make the bucks. Target the production system without going after the farmers.
I saw LGen Leslie (CF Chief of the Land Staff) speak about this a few months back. When asked what our anti-drug strategy should be in the region, he said that some of the finest minds in the entire world were working on the problem, and they hadn’t come up with any concrete answers yet.
It’s a tough one.
Damn. Someone beat me to the CWB comparison/solution.
I see no reason that Afghanistan could not move further up the value-add chain. It could be the basis of an entire industry, once a knowledge base is established.
It’s a constructive suggestion Kate.
Kate, I’d agree that the perfect can’t be the enemy of the good.
And since there’s always going to be opium grown in Afghanistan one way or another, I don’t see any good reason not to let them into the same club as Turkey and India as far as growing a few thousand hectares for the global pharma industry.
All I’m trying to point out is that such a “solution” would still leave a good 160,000 hectares of illegal poppy crop under cultivation, with no market other than the heroin trade. That’s where the problem lies, and that’s what pays the Taliban.
Whatever we do with legal production, there will always be more production than that in order to feed the illegal demand, which outstrips the legal demand by a full order of magnitude.
The short version is this: the amount of Afghan poppy production that could be channelled into legal pharmaceuticals is a tiny fraction of the overall problem.
Just to fill in for those who aren’t familiar with the topic (I wrote something similar at the Western Standard yesterday), most of our opiates used for painkillers are obtained from Turkey. This was done to try and reduce the amount of heroin that came from Turkey in the 70’s etc… Due to their increased use in the terminally ill (as well as for codeine) the legal world supply of opium (the precursor for the opiate painkillers) is just not meeting the world demand. In particular Western Europe currently is suffering a serious shortage of morphine (and dimorphine). In England the shortage is so bad that my aunt (who recently died of cancer) was on two occasions informed that no morphine could be found at her county hospital to treat her pain. She was left to suffer while medicine was shipped out from London. Given the intense shortages of opiates for medical uses it only makes sense to make use of the crops being grown out of Afghanistan. If you can supply a necessary drug precursor while helping poor rural Afghan farmers make a decent, legal living AND take revenue away from the Taliban or drug barons then I figure you have a win, win, win scenario.
Blair, how much is the shortage? Turkey and India produce the world’s legal supply with 14,000 hectares of poppy crop. If the legal shortfall in pharmaceutical opiates were to double that demand to 28,000 hectares, and if the entire shortfall was given to Afghanistan to fill, that would still leave more than 150,000 hectares of illegal crop to replace somehow.
Legalization of the crop only tinkers at the edges of this issue, people.
It’s not a bad idea!
Even if the Illegal demand is still greater it’d cost less to purchase the whole crop under managed programs as means of interdiction than to keep beating the old horses to death.
Destroy what you don’t need and make the drugs so expensive the end users cannot sustain their use.
Of course you need to really tighten up the other side of enforcement. ie.; No get out of jail cards for dealers.
If opiates were good enough for Sherlock Holmes, then they’re good enough for me. 🙂
Okay, seriously, why not encourage Afghanis to produce crops for biofuels? Oil pressed from hemp seed makes excellent biodiesel.
Let’s see; if it is no longer about the oil could it be just about the drugs. This situation is sarcasm at it’s best.
superdave
Did someone say “channeling the economy” ?? Count us in!
Signed,
Karl
Vladimir
Benito
Adolph
Fidel
Hugo
Jack
Hillary
To Flanders Fields the hippies go to smoke the poppies there below and feed their heads.
– The Guess Who, “Friends of Mine”
Jlc,
Third comment from the top. Agreed. The light dawns on a step forward. = TG
When licensed poppy control, as in Turkey, becomes more commonplace, production numbers will reduce the price to that of daffodils.
Not too many AK-47s in the daffodil trade. = TG
Sounds like a good idea to me. We need pharmaceutical opiods, try having surgery without them. The Afghanis aren’t invested in what they grow as long as it provides for their families.
I remember discussing this issue with a friend last year and we both decided that rather than eradication by force we should take eradication by purchase approach instead. Take some of millions of dollars spent on foreign aid and use it instead to purchase the poppy crop. Use what we could for our own drug industry and destroy the rest. Combine this with aid to encourage other crops and rural development would be the best way to get people on our side rather than the Taliban.
Now this approach would cause groups like the Taliban to go after our forces even more since we would be removing one of their major sources of money but they already are going after us anyway. And as we see our Canadian forces haven’t had much trouble taking any Taliban force.
Hopefully we could eventually move to a more substainable agriculture market but even if it doesn’t so what? The drugs are still removed from the market and we have a civilian population that will be on our side informing us of Taliban activity.
I think Damien has it competely right.
The poppy harvest is far larger than is required for medicinal uses. The reason an alternate crop is difficult to find is because this current crop, poppies, sells so well in the illegal market. It supports not simply the farmer but the Al Qaeda army and a host of distributors.
As Damien says – the key area is the distributors. If you legalized the crop, Al Qaeda might target the harvesting, or the transportation and selling. You’d have to have an army set up simply to protect the crop.
It would be like having a federal mint operating in enemy territory.
In the long run, I don’t see it as a viable solution until and unless the Taliban/Al Qaeda are completely removed from any capacity for taking over distribution.
The sissy pink flower in that dumb antiwar poster reading WAR IS NOT HEALTHY FOR CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS must be a OPIUM POPPY and it was desined by a drag addicted wussietard
ET, I admit I skipped many posts just to reply to your stance on regulation of alcohol, but anyway: Canadian society regulates the sale of cigarettes, but large part of high school students still smoke in the school yards. This is hypocrisy.
I have an alternative solution: let’s buy just one year’s poppy crop from the farmers and pay with the seeds of the cultures, that grow in Afghanistan, and with machines to cultivate those plants, also provide credits for farmers education. This will automatically replace large part of poppy fields with wheat, barley, canola or whatever will grow in Afghanistan.
It makes sense to buy this product from the Afghanis of course. It also makes sense for the Afghani economy to diversity too.
The group that’s in charge of licit poppy growth is the UN’s International Narcotics Control Board.
This is what they have to say about Afghanistan:
“… He noted with concern that there had been proposals to legalize opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, but the Board believed that suggestion was simplistic, not feasible and based on an incorrect premise.”
Full link here:
http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2007/070307_INCB.doc.htm
Tons of articles … google – poppy australia turkey france spain
Interesting tidbit: in May 2001 Colin Powell gave the Taliban $43 million to aid farmers hurt by the Taliban’s opium ban:
U.S. PAID TALIBAN TO FIGHT DRUGS
Thursday, October 4, 2001
“To date, such efforts have had mixed success. For example, the United States gave $43 million to the Taliban this year to support drug eradication in return for a Taliban pledge to eliminate Afghanistan’s massive opium crop.
U.N observers say the Taliban followed through on their pledge by virtually wiping out opium production in the parts of Afghanistan they control. But U.S. officials say the ban had little effect on trafficking because the Taliban didn’t eliminate big opium stockpiles from previous years or stop traffickers. ”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/04/MN67246.DTL
In the spirit of full disclosure: I grow opium poppies every year.