Opium Production in Afghanistan - Medical Production

Medical Production

The Senlis Council has proposed legalizing opium production for medical purposes. Opium can be manufactured into codeine and morphine, both legal pain-killers. The reason for this is that it will not only solve the problem of illicit opium production in Afghanistan, but will also lower the price of prescription drugs worldwide, thus making healthcare more affordable for those requiring those drugs.

Others have argued that legalizing opium production would neither solve the problem nor would it be workable in practice. They argue that illegal diversion of the crop could only be minimized if the Afghans had the necessary resources, institutional capacity and control mechanisms in place to ensure that they were the sole purchaser of opiate raw materials. For them, there is currently no infrastructure in place to set up and administer such a scheme. They reason that in the absence of an effective control system, traffickers would be free to continue to exploit the market and there would be a high risk that licit cultivation would be used for illegal purposes and that the Afghan government would be in direct competition with the traffickers, thereby driving up the price of opium, and attracting more farmers to cultivate. The Afghan government has ruled out licit cultivation as a means of tackling the illegal drug trade: however in Turkey in the 1970s, legalizing opium production, with US support brought illicit trafficking under control within four years. Afghan villages have strong local control systems based around the village shura, which with the support of the Afghan government and its international allies, could provide the basis for an effective control system. This idea is developed in the recent Senlis Council report "Poppy for Medicine" which proposes a technical model for the implementation of poppy licensing and the legal control of cultivation and production of Afghan morphine.

Some believe that there is also little evidence to show that Afghan opium would be economically competitive in a global market place. Australia, France, India, Spain, and Turkey currently dominate the export market for licit opiates. Due to the high cost of production in countries where cultivation is undertaken on small landholdings, such as India and Turkey, licit production requires market support (the production costs for the equivalent of 1 kg of morphine in 1999 was US$56 in Australia, US$159.77 in India and US$250 in Turkey). The current cost of production of one kilogram of morphine equivalent in Afghanistan is approximately US$450. However, a poppy for medicine project in Afghanistan could provide a cheap pain relief option for pain sufferers who find morphine prices extremely elevated

The price of illicit opium far exceeds that of licit, (in India, in 2000, the price for licit opium was US$13–29 per kilo, but for illicit US$155–206). Although there are many complex reasons behind the decision to grow poppy, one of them is the current economic dependence of poppy farmers on the illicit trade. Whilst traffickers continue to be free to exploit the illicit market, legalization would not change this. Demand for illicit opiates would not disappear even if Afghan opium were used for licit purposes and a vacuum would open that traffickers could exploit. However, currently 100% of Afghan opium is diverted to the illegal opium trade and funds in some cases terrorist activities. Despite eradication efforts since the international intervention in 2001, poppy cultivation and illicit opium production has increased, as UNODC figures show. A licensing system would bring farmers and villages into a supportive relationship with the Afghan government, instead of alienating the population by destroying their livelihood, and provide the economic diversification that could help cultivators break ties with the illicit opium trade.

The International Narcotics Control Board states that an over production in licit opiates since 2000 has led to stockpiles in producing countries 'that could cover demand for two years'. Thus, some say Afghan opium would contribute to an already oversupplied market and would potentially cause the supply and demand imbalance that the UN control system was designed. However, the World Health Organisation points out that there is an acute global shortage of poppy-based medicines such as morphine and codeine. This is largely due to chronic underprescription (especially in countries where morphine is extremely highly priced). The International Narcotics Control Board which regulates opium supply throughout the world enforces the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs: this law provides that countries can only demand the raw poppy materials corresponding to the use of opium-based medicines over the last two years and thus limits countries who have low levels of prescription in terms of the amounts they can demand. As such, 77% of the world's opium supplies are being used by only six countries, leaving the rest of the world lacking in essential medicines such as morphine and codeine (See Fischer, B J. Rehm, and T Culbert, "Opium based medicines: a mapping of global supply, demand and needs" in Spivack D. (ed.) Feasibility Study on Opium Licensing in Afghanistan, Kabul, 2005. p. 85–86. ). A second-tier supply system, that complements the current UN control system by supplying opium-based medicines to countries currently not receiving the poppy-based pain relief medicines needed, would maintain the balance established by the UN system and provide a market to Afghan-made poppy-based medicines.