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. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart