Afghan opium
The problems with the Senlis Council's proposal (see at link: Poppy for Medicine – a practical solution for southern Afghanistan’s opium crisis) are described in a letter to the National Post:
Re: Let's Buy Afghanistan's Poppies, editorial, June 4.Update: Thanks to Babbling, an earlier post on this by Bruce Rolston.
Before we rush to buy up the Afghanistan opium poppy crop, some fact-checking might be in order. The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) of the United Nations predicts that world demand in 2007 for medical opiates will be about 420 tonnes of morphine equivalent. The INCB predicts legal production to be 362 tonnes, leaving a deficit of about 58 tonnes. However, the inventory controlled by the INCB amounts to 689 tonnes: 12 times the estimated 2007 shortfall.
These numbers led Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, to state in the executive summary of the Afghanistan Opium Survey 2006 that "there is no shortage of medical morphine in the world."
The annual Afghanistan illegal production of 6,100 tonnes of opium contains about 600 tonnes of morphine equivalent. This is 143% greater than current world total legal production controlled by the INCB.
Ironically, even if the demand for medical morphine were there, the "Let's Buy Afghanistan's Poppies" proposal is more likely to boost poppy production, as Afghan farmers move to supply their new customers, as well as continue to supply their existing drug-lord customers in the $3.1-billion heroin trade. All this is to say, there is no quick and easy solution to the serious poppy cultivation problem in Afghanistan.
Colonel (ret'd) Brian MacDonald, senior defence analyst, Conference of Defence Associations, Toronto.
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 5:09 p.m.
1 Comments:
A comment by Colin P, received via e-mail:
"As I have said elsewhere, buying the crop is viable if:
Force everyone to sell to the government at a fixed but decent price or face eradication.
Use some to build a pharmaceutical industry for domestic use, reduces hard currency requirements and builds some local capacity. Burn the rest.
Issue permits for the existing fields, each year require the farmers to plant a percentage of food or other crops and pay the difference, each year slowly increase the percentage of other crops to be grown.
This will buy time for the government to stabilize, to build infrastructure for local food production, storage, transport and sale.
At some point you will have to wean the farmers off of the subsidy. This will cause some backlash, but hopefully the government will be in a stronger position.
Benefits:
The Taliban and drug lords are cut out of most of the money making loop, they can extort the money from the farmer, but will make enemies of them by doing so.
Reduces the flow of money to the Taliban.
Keeps people employed until other jobs are available.
Reduces the amount of raw drug reaching the market and reducing impacts on Western health care system.
Cons:
Will be very expensive, but may be cheaper than letting the Taliban have access to the money to buy weapons and support,
Long term bandaid which will need to be fixed in about 10 years time.
The systems of licensing, drug making and other will be open to corruption and will likely be abused.
Conclusion: There is no easy and nice answer, we don’t have the troops to eradicate the crops outright and deal with the aftermath."
Mark
Ottawa
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