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As the raw material for essential painkilling medicines such as morphine, if carefully
controlled, the opium poppy can be a positive resource, both for economic
development, and to bring illegal drug production under control. This Poppy for
Medicine Technical Dossier comprises a blueprint for the implementation of
integrated grassroots-level counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency projects. These
projects are village-based Poppy for Medicine schemes; through which small Afghan
village-based organizations are licensed to locally produce simple poppy-based
medicines, for sale by the Afghan government to meet the growing global need for
affordable painkilling medicines.
The licensed cultivation of poppy for the production of medicines has important
precedents as a counter-narcotics strategy, and indeed, Afghanistan’s current Counter
Narcotics Law provides for the implementation of poppy licensing schemes. Based
on this law, on international precedents, and on extensive field research, a
Poppy for Medicine project model has been developed which is tailored to the
complexities of Afghanistan.
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Community control the key condition for Poppy for Medicine Project licence
The initiative would not provide a blanket license for all Afghan farming communities
to grow poppy and produce opium. Rather, specific farming communities would be
licensed by a central government agency to implement Poppy for Medicine projects to
locally produce morphine medicines under tightly controlled and highly monitored
conditions. Receipt of these licences would carry three conditions: the
unavailability of sustainable livelihoods other than to poppy cultivation in a
potential project village; a community-wide commitment to the elimination of
drug trafficking in the areas under community control; and an undertaking to
implement economic diversification activities.
Morphine: a simple poppy-derived pain medicine remains the world’s most
effective painkiller
The benchmark to which all new painkilling medicines are measured, morphine is the
gold standard in pain management, and forms the basis of treatment for pain around
the world.
A nineteenth century medicine, morphine was discovered in 1805. The extraction of
morphine from raw poppy materials is relatively simple, requiring inexpensive
chemicals and simple chemical processes, and ten kilograms of raw poppy materials
yields approximately one kilogram of morphine medicines.
While in the past morphine was used to treat everything from insomnia to alcohol
abuse, today morphine forms the bedrock of pain management for patients suffering
from all moderate to severe pain, including pain associated with HIV/AIDS and
cancer. On the World Health Organisation’s Model List of Essential Medicines,
morphine is considered the world’s most effective painkiller.
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Poppy for Medicine project model compliant with international law
Providing for the production and export of finished poppy-based medicines, the
Poppy for Medicine project model would not unbalance the international system of
raw poppy materials supply, and would therefore comply with the regulations of the
1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the international legal instrument which governs the production and export of raw poppy materials from supply countries to
manufacturing countries. Further, the finished morphine medicines exported from
Afghanistan would only be sold to those countries currently lacking access to
affordable pain medicines. As such, Afghan-made medicines would not compete with
current international medicine suppliers.
International precedent for poppy licensing as an alternative to forced
eradication
In 1970 the US offered financial compensation in return for the eradication of poppy
in Turkey. The Turkish government refused, emphasising the political weight of the
70,000 poppy farming families, with Prime Minister Demirel saying “eradication
would create a clash between the government forces and the people, and would make
the problem worse, since it would create public support for plantings.” Turkey
insisted that eradication would “bring down the government,” and US memos from
this period indicate that the Nixon administration was fully aware that “further
pressure to eradicate could ‘topple’ the Demirel government.”
In 1970 the Turkish government decided to pursue the implementation of a poppy
licensing system for the production of medicines. Acknowledging that licensed
Turkish opium would help resolve the global shortage of poppy-based painkillers, the
United States began to support the Turkish poppy licensing programme, extending
‘special protected market status’ to Turkey under a Drug Enforcement Agency
Regulation, commonly known as the ‘80-20’ Rule.
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