Posted on 11/21/2005 3:58:37 PM PST by JTN
The West should buy up Afghanistan's opium crop and license its use for pain-relief medicines rather than trying to destroy the crop, it is proposed today.
The Senlis Council, an international drug policy think-tank with operations in Afghanistan, says the planned deployment of 3,000 British troops to smash the narcotics trade there is doomed to fail.
Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan has once again emerged as the world's leading producer of opium. Almost all the heroin sold on Britain's streets comes from remote farms in the mountains, controlled by tribal warlords out of reach of the central government in Kabul.
The UN last year called Afghanistan a "narco-economy" responsible for 87 per cent of the world's supply of illegal opium, with a harvest of 4,100 metric tonnes.
Some 3.5 million Afghans are involved in the opium trade, which accounts for two thirds of its gross domestic product.
Senlis will present a feasibility study of its plan today at Chatham House in London. The idea is to establish a licensing system under which the Afghan government would control poppy cultivation for the production of opium-based pain killers, such as morphine and codeine, rather than trying to suppress it.
The study suggests that a military response to the problem will prove ineffective and simply destabilise the country's fledgling democracy. Emmanuel Reinert, the executive director of Senlis, said: "It is totally unrealistic even to attempt to eliminate the crop.
"How can one hope to achieve stability and gain the support of the farmers for a new Afghanistan through the destruction of the crops that provide for their families?"
Senlis argues that as there is a shortage of pain-killing drugs, and the EU allows farmers to grow opium under licence, the same opportunity should exist for Afghanis.
They ought to sell it online.
I burn up four or five hundred dollars a year on Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen.
I'd like to see a comparative study.
Heh! Nice buzz dude!
"Why not treat the Afghan Poppy farmers the same way we treat some American farmers, pay them NOT to grow poppies."
They did do that in the very beginning. I recall Karzai saying that, and "We had a large increase in poppy crops that year". He went on to say they screwed up and are working on other ways. He went on and on on how Afghan pomegranets are the world's best and to increase their market share.
It's a tough spot to be in if you're trying to bring the value of pomegranets up to heroin for the local farmer. For the dealer not so hard (pomegranite? okay. Heroin? Bang.) But for the farmer that's been growing poppies for generations that might be harder.
1) What is the world demand for "legitimate" opium based pharmaceuticals compared to the amount of opium currently under cultivation in Afghanistan?
2) Do you think that Afghan farmers grow opium because that is the only crop that grows there, or do you think that they grow it because they are forced to by the local warlords?
3) If the West started buying up the farmer's opium, do you think the drug dealing warlords will just shrug their shoulders and go home?
Here is a lesson in unintended consequences: Whenever a government subsidizes something, you get more of that something. If Western governments begin to subsidize opium production by buying the crop (and I presume also outbidding the drug dealers, driving up the price of opium), you will get more opium production, an outcome we do not want.
We have tried to pay the farmers NOT to grow opium. To just sit there and grow nothing, and make the same money as if they did grow it, but guess what? The warlords started to kill the farmer's family members, so the farmers continued to grow opium. It takes a naive think tank to come up with a scheme to buy back the opium and think the illegal drug problem will be solved.
Silliest thing I've read all week; but the week is young.
Given that the legal market in opium also benefits only thugs and terrorists, this makes no sense whatsoever.
The identical thugs and terrorists control both the illegal or the ostensibly legal supply. And given also the nature of the drug, one year's supply probably satisfies 25 years of legal use. Then What?
This sounds like a thinly disguised Thug and Terrorist welfare plan...
I can foresee absolutely no unintended effects from that plan! LOL
At the time it was pointed out by a junior criminal talked to that the Cartels saw the value in this, hence their rapid propagation of the new variety. It also talked of a large and well-funded attempt to set up decent biochem facilities to research 'better' drugs for their victioms and respond to any western countermeasures. That was S. America, but I don't doubt they'd sell their expertise eastwards...
Heh, its sort of scary when you realize that the big cartels could probably easily afford to have a multi-billion dollar R&D budget if necessary. I mean, we've already caught them building fricken submarines!
No, the legal market in opium benefits people on pain medication, the doctors and hospitals who dispense it, the pharmaceutical companies that make it, and the farmers who can grow it. There are 130,000 such farmers licensed in India alone with more in Australia, France and Turkey. Furthermore
According to the World Health Organization and the International Narcotics Control Board, there is a shortage of essential pain relief medications, particularly in the developing world. Currently only seven countries consume 77% of opium-based medicines – US, UK Spain, Italy, France; Australia and Japan. Toronto University, who worked on the report, found that only 24 percent of moderate to severe pain relief is met even in these countries. Many developing countries, including Afghanistan, have little or no access to these medicines.This sounds like a thinly disguised Thug and Terrorist welfare plan...
Thugs and terrorists do not benefit from legal operations. It was the Busch family, not the Kennedy's, who benefited when the 18th amendment was repealed. Besides this, Afghanistan is a very poor country and much of its economy relies on opium. By continuing to fight this, we may be enriching "thugs and terrorists" who can benefit from huge profit margins, but the small farmer who has his crop destroyed is crushed.
Maybe they could use the plant to make biodiesels. All the hippies would be out jogging on smoggy days.
It's high. See comment #29.
2) Do you think that Afghan farmers grow opium because that is the only crop that grows there, or do you think that they grow it because they are forced to by the local warlords?
Good question. My guess would be that the real answer is that it's primarily because it's the crop that gives them the most "bang for the buck", meaning the most profitable and easiest to grow.
3) If the West started buying up the farmer's opium, do you think the drug dealing warlords will just shrug their shoulders and go home?
No, I don't, but a lot of other problems will be taken care of. The warlords will still be around, but poor farmers who grow opium will have less to fear from them as they will no longer be afraid of approaching the authorities with their problems, since they will not have anything to hide from them.
Here is a lesson in unintended consequences: Whenever a government subsidizes something, you get more of that something. If Western governments begin to subsidize opium production by buying the crop (and I presume also outbidding the drug dealers, driving up the price of opium), you will get more opium production, an outcome we do not want.
The price of opium will go down! Right now we are trying to killing the crops in order to decrease the supply, causing the price of opium to inflate. The DEA has recently been bragging that their cocaine eradication efforts in South America has caused the price of cocaine to increase to its highest point in three years. It may be disputable whether the eradication efforts should get the credit, but the fact is that when you put this sort of thing on the black market, prices inflate.
I agree with every word. It's worth noting that I believe that opium should be legalized for recreational use as well.
Opium is a wonder drug actually.
Misused precisely because of that but still the best pain killer around.
ask anyone with terminal pain if they want morphine or fentanyl...and in those countries where heroin is a legal pain med then it's really no question
I forgot about that.
I remember a depressing National Geographic story on their network of planes equipeed with radars and laptops accompanying one big drug run into the states and their ability to triangulate and ID any possible coast guard vessels do they could order their waiting vessels to retreat or advance if the coast was clear.
That much money buys an awful lot of tech and brains as you say....
PS - I also heard they managed to get a full phone switching computer/machine which was wired into the grid in one S. American capital and a s aresult they were able to monitor calls throughout the city including the American embassy, Law enforcement agencies, etc. I don't think they could listen in, but they could identify both numbers and it helped them track downb snitches, investigators, etc.
>Sounds like a PING for the Libertarians to come forward from >the shadows once more.
You do know that heroin isn't illegal in almost all other countries in the world, don't you? Its very heavily regulated and basically can only be prescribed to terminal patients but heroin does have a purpose in our society. In American society where any "drug" must be villified and declared immoral this isn't the case.
Its the best pain killer we've got after all.
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