Pubdate: Tue, 04 Sep 2007
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2007 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Tom Fawthrop

OPIUM: CURSE OR CURE?

Obsession with drug mafias and addiction has blinded western 
governments to a chronic shortage of pain-killing opiates.

Billions of dollars and ever-increasing budgets thrown at opium 
eradication and the so-called war on drugs have miserably failed to 
stem the global flow of narcotics. This year's record opium harvest 
in Afghanistan is 8,200 tons. Burma - still ruled by a brutal junta - 
ranks second. Years of narcotics repression targeting the producer 
countries has made no difference to the availability of heroin on the 
streets of London and Glasgow or cocaine on the streets of New York.

The illegal opium trade in Burma and Afghanistan finances warlords 
and sustains instability and various types of terrorism, yet almost 
unnoticed in the media, the UN reports that the developing world is 
experiencing a severe shortage of pain-killing opiates.

We inhabit a world of crazy skewered economics and market 
distortions. The hospitals of Rangoon tell their cancer patients they 
have no morphine to relieve the dreadful pain, and advise the 
relatives to buy opium on the plentiful black market.

Developing countries are home to 80% of the world's population, but 
they consume just 6% of the medication derived from the 
much-demonised opium poppy. If it is shocking that drug addicts in UK 
die from a heroin overdose, why are we not equally shocked that the 
west's obsession with banning narcotics has contributed to such 
dreadful deprivations that in the developing world, most patients 
with cancer, AIDS and other painful conditions live and die in agony.

While western politicians, and narcotics agents demand that poor 
farmers of the third world destroy their livelihoods, ie their coca 
and their opium crops, we allow the rich farmers of Tasmania to earn 
over $130 million dollars a year (1999 figure) from selling opium to 
pharmaceutical companies.

In the mountains of landlocked dirt-poor Laos, hill-tribe peoples 
have been cultivating opium for nearly 200 years - far longer than 
Tasmanian farmers, the new boys on the opium bloc. Fierce US and EU 
pressure forced a reluctant government in Vientiane to institute a 
rapid opium eradication policy since 2001, causing the uprooting of 
mountain villages, the loss of livelihood and a shocking increase in 
disease and mortality.

The apparent success in reducing opium was a chronic failure in every 
other respect. The UN's World Food Progamme now provides emergency 
food aid in Laos to desperately hungry ex-opium farmers. Other far 
worse drugs have replaced opium, that was not only a good cash crop, 
but also an effective medicine for many ailments. A well-known 
Laotian academic in Vientiane, a specialist in ethnicity and culture 
bitterly complained to me recently: "This is not fair. Why is it OK 
for Tasmania to profit from the benefits of opium but we have to 
destroy our crop? Why not Laos?"

Eighteen countries are members of the licit opium cultivation club 
with the approval of the INCB (International Narcotics Control Board) 
in Vienna. Among the bigger players in the opium export market are 
Australia, India, Turkey and Spain - we can call this group Opec2 [ 
Opium-Producing Exporting Countries].

Both morphine and codeine have featured on World Health 
Organisation's (WHO) Model List of Essential Drugs since its 
inception in 1977, while morphine is included in the WHO's New 
Emergency Health Kit. Yet the INCB, far from ensuring these needs 
have been met, actively discourages any more countries from applying 
for a licence to grow poppies for medicine.

WHO experts say there is a strong demand for more opium for medicine. 
Senlis, a European research institute, estimates that meeting the 
global need for pain medications would require an additional 10,000 
tons of opium a year - more than the combined output of Afghanistan and Burma.

The failure of opium repression surely demands some radical 
rethinking and debate about alternative drug strategies, that focus 
on health and harm reduction, rather than crude and ultimately futile 
repression.

Western government and narcotic agencies are sadly so immersed in the 
drug enforcement ideological straightjacket, that alternative 
policies and any mention of legalisation tends to be glibly dismissed 
out of hand as 'unrealistic' or 'unworkable,' closing the door on 
debate, before a serious debate can even begin.

In Afghanistan where the opium economy is now constitutes 60% of 
total GDP, it is hopelessly unrealistic to imagine that alternative 
livelihoods can suddenly be delivered on such a scale to compensate 
for vast losses that would be sustained by abandoning the opium poppy.

Realism lies in the opposite direction of alternative opium policies 
and gradual steps taken towards a transformation from an illegal 
Taliban fiefdom towards a state-controlled opium crop offering 
extraordinary medical benefits including pain relief.

The evidence on the ground is that where opium crops have been cut 
down, poor farmers have been further impoverished to the point of 
destitution and bitter anger. This has bred support for the Taliban 
insurgents in Afghanistan, and a 34% resurgence in poppy cultivation 
in Laos (see UN 2006 Opium Survey).

The Senlis Council has proposed a win-win solution. Adopting it would 
improve the Afghan economy, deprive terrorists of income and keep 
heroin away from dealers and addicts, all while offering pain relief 
to the third world. CIDA, the development arm of the Canadian 
government, has funded a pilot study.

Can illegal opium successfully be turned into a legal win-win 
situation where farmers, and government can enjoy mutual benefits? 
Turkey is a very good example. Turkish farmers were very angry when 
the government first introduced on a ban on their traditional crop 
under pressure from the US government in early 1970s. Unable to 
enforce the ban on illegal cultivation, Turkey with the consent of 
the INCB and support from the UN to set up an opium processing plant, 
switched to state control and licensing for the legal pharmaceutical 
market. It has been a success story ever since.

Why burn and destroy opium crops in Afghanistan, Burma and Laos, when 
their poor farmers could so easily derive the same legitimate income 
as their counterparts in India, Turkey and Tasmania? And if there 
should be over-supply in the future, trade justice would dictate that 
the developed countries of Australia, France and Spain should cut 
back their quotas in favour of the poorest farmers from the poorest countries.

The logistics and problems are of course not identical. Afghanistan 
is in the midst of war and government first has to gain control of 
Helmand province. In Laos it would be far easier to implement with 
international supervision and technical inputs. In Burma opium and 
opium taxes have fuelled all sides in the Shan states. The generals 
have long profited from a narco-economy.

Given the repeated failure of drug wars, and the obsession with 
targeting the producers in the global chain of supply and demand, it 
is time to face up to the inconvenient truth that the US-driven 
strategy is unworkable. There are no easy simple alternatives, but 
Turkey has shown that with the political will it can work.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart