Pubdate: Wed, 27 Dec 2006 Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB) Copyright: 2006 Winnipeg Free Press Contact: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) POPPIES AND PEACE There is no shortage of opium poppies in Afghanistan, despite the best efforts of ISAF forces to eradicate the controversial crop. There is a world shortage of essential opium-based medicines such as morphine and codeine. If these two circumstances can be brought together the Taliban can be undermined and the war shortened, Afghans can prosper as legitimate farmers instead of the suppliers of more than 90 per cent of the world's heroin. All of this could be done and an adequate supply of painkillers ensured not just for Western hospitals but also for a Third World where shortages are extreme and patients by the million live and die in agony because of it. The Senlis Council, a European think-tank, suggests that an opium licensing system could be used to divert the illegal drug trade into regulated sales of the poppy product for legitimate medicines. Setting up such a system is beyond Afghanistan's capability today -- the nation does not have the bureaucratic, financial or law-enforcement infrastructure to operate it. Even with the international assistance it would need, such a system would be complicated and there is no guarantee that it would be acceptable to Afghan poppy farmers if it did not provide an income approximate to what they earn by selling to drug traffickers and the Taliban. The poppy problem is serious, however, and not only as a factor in prolonging the war. If it is not solved, it will hang like a cloud over an Afghan government that will almost certainly be too fragile to destroy the opium trade itself. There are many suggestions for dealing with the issue on a makeshift basis, ranging from spraying the poppy fields with Agent Orange to instructing allied troops to appease the farmers by simply ignoring the opium trade. Those don't amount to much more than applying plasters to a festering wound that could kill Afghanistan's democracy. There is no quick fix. The only useful treatment lies in long-term solutions such as that proposed by Senlis. The think-tank's answer may not be the right one, but it recognizes the realities of the Afghan opium trade and the urgent need to deal with them. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman