[NYTr] Afghan Poppies Could Be Painkillers for the Poor

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Dan Clore - activ-l 

Afghan Poppies Could Be Painkillers for the Poor

[I've been pointing out for years that while governments force chronic 
pain patients to do without effective painkillers, the same governments 
constantly whine about the "problem" of people growing these useful 
drugs.--DC]

The New York Times - Oct 15, 2007
http://tinyurl.com/27lll9

Could Afghan Poppies Be Painkillers for the Poor?

by Donald G. McNeil Jr.

As opium harvests in Afghanistan have steadily increased, some think 
tanks and politicians -- mostly in Britain -- have raised a trenchant 
question: rather than trying to eradicate Afghanistans poppies, why not 
instead buy them and make morphine?

Given that the World Health Organization estimates that over 6.2
million of the worlds poor are dying of cancer, AIDS, burns and wounds
without adequate pain relief, the argument goes, wouldnt it make sense?

Most prominent among these proposals is an analysis by the Senlis 
Council, a drug-policy research group with offices in London, Brussels 
and Kabul. The council argues that the United States and Britain waste 
more than $800 million a year, as well as soldiers lives, trying 
futilely to eradicate poppies.

Instead, it calculated two years ago, Afghanistans whole crop could be 
purchased for about $600 million -- the farm gate price, not the 
street value of the heroin into which it is refined, which is over $50 
billion. (The farm gate estimate has gone up as the crop has 
increased, and may be $1 billion now.)

Whatever the price, enforcement will not work, said Romesh 
Bhattacharji, a former narcotics commissioner of India who has 
investigated the Afghan situation for the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime. The Afghan farmer will not switch to alternative crops
as long as there is a market for his opium.

Mr. Bhattacharji says he now endorses the idea of buying the crop.

The United States and British governments are vigorously opposed; 
instead they favor tough eradication tactics and more encouragement to 
farmers to grow wheat, cotton or fruit.

Theyre growing a poison, sir -- one that kills Afghanistans neighbors 
and corrupts officials, Thomas A. Schweich, chief of the State 
Departments Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, said 
in a telephone interview. There needs to be better and more forceful 
eradication.

There is an American precedent for buying. In the late 1960s, the Nixon 
administration, fighting a heroin epidemic, pressured Turkey, then the 
worlds chief grower, to eradicate its poppy crops.

Unable to do that (both because of corruption and because peasant 
farmers vote) Turkey in 1974 started licensing farmers to grow for the 
morphine trade, and the United States in 1981 gave protected-market 
status to Turkey and India, obligating itself to buy 80 percent of the 
raw material for American painkillers from them. Why not, the Senlis 
Council and others argue, let Afghanistan join the legitimate supply 
chain? Mr. Schweich and others reply that it is simply impractical -- 
Afghanistan grows 93 percent of the worlds poppies; its crop is 15 
times the size of Indias.

Also, heroin smugglers pay better. For example, India officially paid 
its legal farmers only $20 to $50 per kilogram last year, while farmers 
interviewed in central India in May said illegal buyers were offering 
$100 to $190. Prices in Afghanistan, at roughly the same time, were 
about $125.

Why would anybody switch to legal opium when they can get those 
prices? Mr. Schweich asked. Making up the difference with price 
supports -- another idea with American precedents -- would cost as much 
as an extra $800 million.

You can do the math, he said. If we did it, no one in Afghanistan 
would grow any other crop, wed be paying billions for it, and it would 
become a narco-welfare state.

The idea meets opposition from other quarters, too. Jagjit Pavadia, the 
current narcotics commissioner of India, said in an interview that if 
the world becomes ready to buy more morphine for the dying poor she 
would like Indian farmers to benefit first. Because of falling demand, 
India has slowly cut its licensed farmers from 150,000 to 62,000.

A third-generation opium farmer in Neemuch, India, was even more 
adamant. We have 150 years experience in selling to government, said 
Ramchandra Nagda, who also grows wheat, garlic and spices. There is 
better control here than there ever will be in Afghanistan.

The United Nations drugs office estimates that heroin rings buy about
30 percent of Indias crop, despite the efforts of 1,200 narcotics
control bureau officers. Diversion in Afghanistan, a lawless warlord
state, would presumably be far harder to control.

In the British press, there is some serious discussion of the Senlis 
proposal. But in the United States, the idea has attracted little 
attention. The council attributes this partially to the lobbying power 
of the religious right and law enforcement groups, both of which react 
with horror to any talk of legalization.

Its almost theological, their opposition to our idea, said Norine 
MacDonald, the councils founder.

Also, both she and Mr. Bhattacharji said, with a $600 million annual 
budget for eradication, the field attracts paramilitary contractors
with deep connections to the Bush administration, including Blackwater
USA and DynCorp International, both of whom train Afghan anti-narcotics
police.

Mr. Schweich called such a view cynical and inaccurate and maintained 
that local Afghan governors were the leading force in eradication, 
though he agreed that their efforts were plagued with nepotism and 
corruption.

In any case, many experts -- even those favoring the use of 
Afghanistans crop for morphine -- say it does not change one looming 
reality: the heroin trade is so large and so lucrative that someone, 
somewhere, is going to grow the poppies for it.