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.)
Everyone should go and (re)read Damian’s 1:13 post, specifically
“… 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. …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.”
As to Kate’s original question: yes, of course we should be importing poppies from Afghanistan, but like good little decentralized free-market conservatives, we need to by it directly from the farmer…and at a whopping premium, like ~50 times what they get for their next best crop. Since it is estimated that the average farmer currently benefits to the tune of ~14 times through their current “distribution channel”, we should be able to corner the market reasonably cheaply.
Now, with the majority of the populace thinking us really nice guys, dealing with the Taliban should be easier. Kill the competition, and then we can start weaning them off the subsidy. To keep supply and demand in order, we might have to subsidize some other cash crop.
Heck. The entire economic benefit of the poppy “trade” to the current Afghan economy is only a couple of billion dollars. I’m willing to stop funding the CBC to help pay for this. Half way already 🙂
Ural, Ap3 – 5:47 above
Very interesting link you provided.
un.org/News/briefings/docs/2007/070307_INCB.doc.htm
This is the UN and vested interests are suspect. Can we trust this review board?
Reading between the lines, I pick up a hint of a fear of undercut to producers of overpriced corporate patent protected drugs.
A fear similar to that which the music monopoly distributors have for internet distribution.
A valid fear in both cases, I admit.
One need not have the perceptive skills of Sherlock Holmes to spot this as an emotional feeling rather than a report result.
**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.**
Sorry, I have such a hard time swallowing anything coming from the direction of the UN.
Show me the *incorrect premise*, infeasibility, and the why of *simplistic* and one could reconsider.
Otherwise, no sale.
Lots of meat in this part of the report though. . . .
** Afghanistan posed a particular problem, in the sense that opium poppy cultivation was on the increase, and there was a need for action on the part of the Afghan authorities and the international community, he said, calling for broad cooperation and assistance for the war-torn country.
That claim had been based on the purported shortage of licit opiate raw materials for medical and scientific purposes. “That is simply not true. There is no such shortage,” he said. In fact, total production had been in excess of actual needs since 1999.
Moreover, as of 2005, the total stock of licit opiate raw materials was sufficient to cover global demand for nearly two years. The Board was satisfied that the Afghan Government had ignored the debate and the pressure of those pushing for legalization.
Giving some highlights of the report’s analysis of the world drug situation, he said cannabis continued to be the planet’s most abused drug, Afghanistan continued to be the source of the world’s illicit opiates and Africa continued to be increasingly targeted by cocaine-trafficking organizations.
He also cited rising abuse of and trafficking in cocaine in a number of South Asian countries, and said that
Europe was the world’s biggest abuser of cocaine;
======================================
drugs were being exchanged for arms in some parts of the world, including Papua New Guinea; large-scale illicit manufacturing of MDMA (Ecstasy) continued in Australia; and Oceania continued to be a major route for the transhipment of Ecstasy and other methamphetamines.**
======= Intl. Narcotics Control Board
=TG
Damian seems to be missing the point of the whole idea. It doesn’t matter if buying the poppy crop is welfare for Afghan farmers, nor does it matter how much of the cost is offset by legitimate use.
The point is to kill the guys running the drug biz, because A) they export death to Canada in the form of heroin, B) They’re enslaving the farmers and C) oh yeah they’re fanatical terrorists intent on destroying Western civilization by any and all means.
Buying the crop forwards OUR ends by getting the farmers on OUR side, they finger the guys who’ve been enslaving them, then OUR army kills ’em.
Given the choice for once, I’m sure poor Afghan farmers will grow food crops instead of poppies, which they don’t make much money on and can’t eat.
Worth the candle, eh?
Buying up the opium from Afghani farmers is one of the best ideas I’ve heard in some time, but unfortunately the chances of some US pharmacologic jihadist screwing up this plan are rather high.
I doubt there is going to be much of a glut of opium as a fair bit of the product is consumed by the farmers themselves. One estimate I ran into was that the average consumption of opium was ~1 kg/person/year in Burmese opium growing areas which makes perfect sense to anyone who has ever tried making opium the traditional way as it is damn hard work. It may not require much physical strength, but slicing and scraping tens of thousands of poppy pods in a day is the type of thing that makes one reach for the opium pipe at the end of a day. I know what my back would feel like at the end of day like that. It also explains why there is a dearth of opium production in Canada despite the widespread growth of opium poppies in most areas of the country.
That opium is necessary to produce opium should reassure those previous posters who expressed concerns about the large acreage under opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. Poppies also produce edible seed which is something that hasn’t been mentioned.
Opiates are drugs which are currently underused in medicine in large part due to exaggerated concerns about their dangers. Opiates are some of the safest drugs we currently use and far, far safer than NSAIDS which kill about 1500 people/year in Canada. They have risks, like any other drug, and they are addictive, but risk of addiction is highly non-uniform in the population. This probably is as a result of extreme heterogeneity in mu-receptors that occurs in the population. People respond very differently to opiates, and unless people are in pain, the usual effect of an opiate is percieved as unpleasant, not pleasant. One final note on this slight digression and that is that SSRI’s can be very addicting. I’ve seen patients go through 2 weeks of hell after stopping an SSRI which is definately a withdrawal syndrome, but someone the “addicting” label doesn’t seem to get attached to SSRI’s.
With the aging of baby boomers the demand for opiates has nowhere to go but up. Many ex-hippies I know eschew all “chemical” drugs but are ready to utilize botanicals and what could be more natural than hand-scraped organic Afghani opium transported in an ecologically friendly manner from its source on the back of a donkey. These ex-hippies are now reaching an age where their joints are becoming arthritic and pain is becoming one of the most common daily sensations — there is a bright future here for someone ready to step in and meet this demand. A few legal obstacles to overcome, but a potentially huge market.
Tony,
These are the guys that the leftards hate.
Recommendation 9: Drug injection rooms (sometimes called “drug consumption rooms”) continue to operate in a small number of countries, mainly in Europe. The Board reiterates its position that, insofar as they are facilities where persons can abuse with impunity drugs acquired on the illicit market, such rooms contravene the most fundamental principle of the international drug control treaties: drugs should be used only for medical or scientific purposes. The Board urges the Governments of all countries where drug injection rooms are in operation to take prompt action to close those facilities and to provide appropriate services and facilities for the treatment of drug abusers, in accordance with the provisions of the international drug control treaties.
pg2 http://www.incb.org/pdf/e/ar/2006/annual-report-2006-en-4.pdf
The “Analysis of the world situation” section of the link below also makes for interesting reading.
http://www.incb.org/incb/en/annual_report_2006.html
I have been asking the same question for some time. No “brilliant” answers to date. I find that sad.
I have been asking the same question for some time. No “brilliant” answers to date. I find that sad.
Hmm, Phantom. Not really missing the point, just disagreeing with your assessment of its efficacy.
Your plan might work if the only hold the Taliban had on the farmers was an economic one. Unfortunately, buying the crop doesn’t stop the night visits, the bullying, the coercion.
But let’s assume the Taliban will simply lie down and bloodlessly let us take away their main source of revenue. Let’s assume we can buy this year’s entire crop – that the farmers will be willing and able to sell it to us, and that we’ll be willing to pay top dollar for it. Let’s assume it doesn’t matter to us that a goodly portion of such payment would need to be used by the farmers to pay off debts to the enemies of Canada and the emerging Afghan state, that we would end up financing an insurgency against us.
What do all the farmers now do? Sit around and twiddle their thumbs? Oh, grow another crop, you say. Great idea. What are they supposed to grow? Who is going to teach them to grow it (you’re not just going to give them seeds and drive off in a cloud of dust, are you?)? What infrastructure will you use to accomplish this – translators, irrigation canals, roads to get product to market, etc? What happens when yet another drought hits, as it has most of the past decade?
Then what happens when the world won’t pay opium-poppy dollar for “alternative” crops?
Is it that tough to admit this problem may be more complex than you originally thought?
If it could have been solved in a 500-word blog post, don’t you think it would have by now?