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Telegraph - Home front By Philip Johnston: Afghan opium could do some good

For more than two years now, an international think tank, the Senlis Council, has argued that there is an alternative. It wants the West to license Afghanistan’s opium crop for use in palliative medicines, rather than trying to destroy it. There is a world shortage of pain-killing drugs, chiefly morphine and codeine, so why not put the Afghan production on a legitimate basis?

These drugs have to be grown somewhere (they come mainly from India, where 130,000 farmers raise poppies under strict controls). Ironically, Afghanistan is one of many developing countries that has little or no access to these medications. The World Health Organisation says a handful of Western industrialised countries consume three quarters of available opium-based medicines and even they do not have enough to meet demand.

The Senlis idea has been widely pooh-poohed. In a recent report, the International Narcotics Control Board, a UN agency, said: “The idea that legalising opium poppy cultivation would somehow enable the government to obtain control over the drug trade and exclude the involvement of criminal organisations is simplistic and does not take into account the complex situation in the country.”

As the UN 10 years ago set a target of eradicating illegal drugs consumption worldwide by 2008, it is not especially qualified to talk about unrealistic expectations in this field.

He goes on to list the drawbacks (which are basically “We can’t stop 130,000 from growing the stuff so naturally we shouldn’t try only stopping a fraction of that instead” and “Even though Afghanistan is a rapidly growing and developing country, these farmers will be farmers until the end of time. And why wouldn’t they be? Farming is fun!”) but I still think it’s a good idea.