Pubdate: Sun, 20 Jul 2014
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2014 The New York Times Company
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Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Keith Bradsher

SHAKE-UP ON OPIUM ISLAND

Tasmania, Big Supplier to Drug Companies, Faces Changes

Now is the sowing season for opium poppies in the Australian state of 
Tasmania. Tractors chug up and down paddocks, pulling elaborate 
machinery that drills pairs of adjacent, miniature holes in the dirt, 
and then drops a dozen tiny kernels of fertilizer in one of the holes 
and a tiny poppy seed in the other.

By November, the fields will be carpeted in pink flowers with an 
occasional splash of white or mauve. Then the flowers will drop away, 
leaving behind distinctive, cup-shaped pods packed with tiny poppy 
seeds along with the opium latex that surrounds them. When the latex 
dries two months later, the pods are harvested and hauled to 
factories, where machinery separates the seeds and grinds up the rest 
to extract the valuable narcotic alkaloids.

Tasmania, an island off Australia's southern coast, is the start of a 
global supply chain that encompasses the biggest drug companies and 
produces $12 billion a year of opiate painkillers.

Nearly a half-century of assiduous plant breeding, a gentle climate 
and tight regulations have given Tasmania a hammerlock on production 
of one of the pharmaceutical industry's most important raw materials. 
Tasmania, which is about the size of West Virginia, grows about 85 
percent of the world's thebaine, an opium poppy extract used to make 
OxyContin and a family of similarly powerful prescription drugs that 
have transformed pain management over the last two decades. It 
produces all of the world's oripavine, another extract, which is used 
to treat heroin overdoses and shows promise in controlling other 
addictions. Tasmania also accounts for a quarter of the world's 
morphine and codeine, two older painkillers from opium poppies that 
are still widely used, particularly outside North America.

But the global pharmaceutical industry is increasingly worried that 
it is hooked on the island's opium poppy supplies.

The two manufacturers that dominate Tasmanian opium extract 
production have begun twin battles to diversify supply sources and 
alter the plant's genome to produce a stronger, more productive crop. 
The manufacturers, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson, provide 
narcotic alkaloids to their own painkiller units and to other 
companies worldwide, which have started demanding that the two giants 
act to ensure reliable supplies.

"They look at the map of the world, see Tasmania at the bottom, and 
say, 'Are we taking a hemispheric risk, and putting all our eggs in 
one basket?' " said Steve Morris, the general manager of opiates for 
GlaxoSmithKline.

The drug companies are pushing for regulatory approval to cultivate 
opium poppies for export on the Australian mainland near Melbourne. 
The two companies are also trying to persuade the Tasmanian 
government to legalize genetic engineering for poppies, to develop 
varieties that produce more concentrated narcotics and are less 
vulnerable to storms or diseases.

Tasmanian farmers have had a mixed response. They strongly oppose 
production on the Australian mainland and want to hold on to the 
poppy business, which accounts for nearly one-tenth of the farm 
revenue in Tasmania, or roughly $80 million a year. But they know 
they can't keep the industry if they can't ensure supply, and they 
are enthusiastic supporters of genetic engineering. Environmentalists 
and, so far, the Tasmanian government favor keeping the Australian 
state clean of genetically manipulated organisms, a goal that growers 
dismiss. "We grow narcotic drugs - by definition they're not clean," 
said Glynn Williams, the president of Poppy Growers Tasmania, a trade group.

Cockatoos and Poppies

Rohan Kile, the poppy crop supply manager for Glaxo, knows Tasmania 
well. As a child there, he moved from town to town every three years 
because his father was a state forests manager. Now, Mr. Kile, a 
lanky outdoorsman, travels from farm to farm to assess opium production.

On a recent crystalline morning, overlooking a valley with a wide, 
meandering stream, he gave advice on loading the fertilizer and seeds 
behind the tractor for planting. Later in the season, he will discuss 
harvesting. The pods need to be dry enough for processing, but if 
left too long, they may be eaten by hungry, sulphur-crested cockatoos 
and other birds that roost in eucalyptus trees or the 
golden-flowering gorse bushes that hug the low hills.

Mr. Kile recommends strong fences to prevent wallabies - close 
relatives of kangaroos - and people from hopping or walking into 
fields, eating the poppies and suffering narcotic effects. Stoned 
wallabies "can become disoriented and lose their ability to find 
water," he said. Humans who ingest Tasmanian poppies can die.

After harvest in February, farmers deliver the cups to two main 
factories, Johnson & Johnson's green-walled complex in Westbury and 
Glaxo's smaller operation in Latrobe, a Tasmanian river town that 
calls itself the "platypus capital of the world." The bulk of the 
opium poppy extract produced in Tasmania is shipped to pharmaceutical 
factories in the Northeastern United States. With its wealth and a 
largely private health care system willing to pay up for drugs, the 
United States accounts for three-quarters of global opiate painkiller 
sales by tonnage and five-sixths by value.

The entire process is tightly monitored by a United 
Nations-authorized board, which tracks production and requires strict 
security. This body, the International Narcotics Control Board, 
discourages holding big stockpiles for fear that they might be 
diverted into the production of heroin, whose market is more than 
four times the size of the opiate painkillers market.

But without excess stockpiles, the industry can get caught 
flat-footed in a bad year. Mr. Kile recalls the torrential downpours 
in northern Tasmania three years ago that devastated the morphine 
poppy crop just as it was flowering. Although Glaxo said it met all 
existing orders, pharmaceutical companies and health agencies around 
the world suddenly found themselves watching their stocks and hoping 
that they would last until the next harvest.

The industry is quietly increasing its reserves of raw thebaine. It 
had only an eight-month supply on hand at the start of last year - 
not enough to cover the total loss of one harvest - but it now 
appears to have the recommended one-year supply, according to the 
narcotics board.

"The likelihood of complete failure of the Tasmanian crop is 
extremely remote," said Rachel David, a spokeswoman for Johnson & 
Johnson. But "more and more, our customers are asking for a plan in 
case of a dramatic catastrophe in Tasmania."

The Road to Tasmania

The modern poppy industry can be traced to the early 1950s, when 
Stephen King, an agricultural scientist for what was then the Glaxo 
Group, tried in Britain to find a better way to harvest the seed 
pods. During World War II, morphine was widely used to care for 
wounded soldiers and civilians but was sometimes in short supply.

Building on the findings of a Hungarian scientist in the 1920s, Mr. 
King looked to commercialize a labor-efficient process to extract 
opium from poppies - by using machinery to grind up dried pods 
instead of making tiny incisions by hand to drain pods that were 
still green. In the initial phase, he discovered that poppies grown 
in Britain had too little opium because of frequent rain, and he 
began searching for a better climate in a secure location. He wanted 
to start production on the southern coast of Australia, near Melbourne.

But his work coincided with the rise of heroin. As heroin poured into 
Europe and the United States, world leaders struggled to respond. 
International pacts in 1961 and 1972 called for limiting production 
to heavily regulated areas, notably Australia, France, Hungary, 
India, Spain and Turkey.

The United States also decided to buy 80 percent of its morphine from 
Turkey and India, a rule that remains in place today. Turkey was 
given particular preference, as a bulwark to halt the spread of 
communism and as a heavily Muslim country that had warm relations with Israel.

With concerns increasing over heroin, Australian officials rebuffed 
Mr. King's plan to grow poppies on the mainland. Instead, they sent 
him to start poppy farms on an island that the rest of the world 
barely remembered: Tasmania.

The isolation proved an advantage.

Towns like Launceston, Longford, Evandale and other current-day hubs 
of poppy production in north and central Tasmania had been settled by 
tens of thousands of British and Irish convicts transported here in 
the early 19th century as a cheap alternative to prisons in the 
British Isles. They were followed by thousands of so-called free 
settlers, who built communities with main streets still lined by two- 
and three-story pink sandstone buildings.

Then people largely stopped moving there. With 500,000 people, 
Tasmania now rivals Iceland in having one of the world's least mobile 
populations, with little immigration or emigration. Particularly in 
rural Tasmania, people do not just know everyone in their towns - 
their families tend to have known one another for at least four 
generations, and often five or six. Secrets are few, helping to keep 
drug use in check.

While marijuana and methamphetamines have sometimes been a problem in 
Tasmania, heroin production has been virtually nonexistent despite 
all the raw opium grown and collected each year. Arriving aircraft 
and ships are closely watched.

"You won't see many tie-dyed shirts in Longford," said Mr. Kile, the 
Glaxo manager, as he drove past Longford's brick Anglican church, 
which dates to 1839.

More Than Morphine

Moving to Tasmania in 1965, Mr. King set up a laboratory and a 
plant-breeding program that would transform poppy production, turning 
each flower into a tiny factory churning out a range of highly 
specialized narcotic alkaloids suited to pharmaceutical 
manufacturing. His team, soon followed to Tasmania by Johnson & 
Johnson scientists, began breeding different strains tailored to each 
of the island's seven microclimates and figuring out the right 
combination of fertilizers for each variety.

As the breeding program developed, drug researchers in Europe and the 
United States figured out that morphine was not the only alkaloid 
narcotic of value in opium poppies. They experimented with thebaine, 
oripavine and other chemicals in opium, finding important uses.

In 1998, scientists at Johnson & Johnson commercialized "Norman," a 
variety that produced a much higher concentration of thebaine. They 
followed in 2009 with "Ted," a variety that made mostly thebaine. 
Glaxo developed its own varieties.

Tasmania's dominance of poppy production emerged with the rapid rise 
of OxyContin and other thebaine-based drugs in the 1990s. Thebaine, 
unlike morphine, was not included in the American government's policy 
of buying 80 percent of opiate raw material from Turkey and India. 
That allowed Glaxo and Johnson & Johnson, as well as the drug 
companies that bought from them, to turn almost entirely to Tasmania 
for the raw materials needed for newer painkillers and addiction treatments.

Few medicines in the past quarter-century have made as big a 
difference in treatment as thebaine-based painkillers - and few have 
been as quickly profitable for the pharmaceutical industry. 
OxyContin, which is made by Purdue Pharma and produces $2 billion a 
year in retail sales, is derived mainly from Tasmania-grown thebaine. 
Rival makers have introduced more than 40 other chemically similar 
opiate painkillers, like Roxicodone and Percocet.

The worldwide sales boom for OxyContin and its siblings has resulted 
in a tripling of Tasmania's poppy acreage since the late 1990s, to 
nearly 30,000 hectares, or 74,000 acres. Poppies tailored for 
thebaine production now are about two-thirds of Tasmania's crop, with 
morphine poppies making up an additional quarter and codeine and a 
few other alkaloids the rest.

The Mainland Threat

Charlie Mackinnon, a square-shouldered, fifth-generation farmer, 
takes pride in his family's attachment to the land. He is even a 
little embarrassed when he says his ancestors didn't build his 1832 
homestead themselves - his great-great-grandfather bought it from 
another farmer.

Standing beside his field, Mr. Mackinnon, 35, ticked off the concerns 
for poppy farmers. Downy mildew, a plant pest, is a constant fear. 
The big worry is rain.

He recounted how a friend planted almost 300 acres of opium poppies 
last year, only to lose the entire crop when a heavy rain left his 
fields so soggy that the plants' roots died. "They don't like wet 
feet," he said. "They don't like too much moisture."

Tasmania's climate has become a little less gentle lately, for 
reasons not well understood. An increasingly severe drought from 2006 
to 2010 ended in northern Tasmania only with rains and flooding that 
devastated the 2011 crop, though central Tasmania had a bumper crop that year.

Tasmanian farmers can sell their poppy harvests for at least $1,600 
an acre, significantly more than other crops. But Mr. Mackinnon and 
other farmers said herbicide and fungicide costs were high. Poppies 
also deplete beneficial bacteria and fungi in the soil. So they can 
be grown only once every third year in fertile northern Tasmania, 
alternating with potatoes, and as little as once every seventh year 
in drier areas farther south, where they alternate with sheep pastures.

Poppies have become Tasmania's third-largest farm sector by revenue, 
after dairy and beef. "If it's done correctly, it can give a good 
return," said Mr. Williams, the president of Poppy Growers Tasmania, 
who is a longtime farmer.

Tasmanian farmers are fighting to preserve their role. France and 
Spain are looking at ways to expand the tiny, heavily regulated 
production of state-affiliated companies that run their modest opium 
poppy fields. Britain and Portugal have unilaterally approved 
legalizing regulated opium production, but they don't have the 
backing of the United Nations-authorized board.

The bigger threat for Tasmanian farmers is closer to home. Hidden 
deep inside a few farms on the Australian mainland, and not visible 
from any road, are the secret opium gardens of Johnson & Johnson and 
GlaxoSmithKline. The locations are known only to the farmers, a few 
state and federal Australian regulators and some managers from the 
two pharmaceutical giants. Neither company will provide any details 
except that the fields are near Melbourne in the Australian state of Victoria.

After months of debate, the state Parliament in Victoria voted in 
March to authorize commercial growing of opium poppies. Tasmanian 
farmers and politicians are now lobbying the national government not 
to issue export permits for opiate material grown in Victoria.

The drug companies contend that export permits are a national 
prerogative not linked to the states where crops are grown. The 
national health ministry declined to comment except to say: "Export 
approval is granted by the federal government, subject to legislation 
and international obligations."

One possible solution under discussion has been to limit poppies on 
the mainland to thebaine varieties, because it is nearly impossible 
to convert them into heroin. But the drug companies have been wary of 
any limits. And requiring thebaine varieties on the mainland could 
intensify another problem: illegal poppy tea.

At least three people have died in the last four years in Tasmania 
after stealing poppy seed pods and trying to make them into tea. More 
deaths could occur if poppies are grown on the mainland, where the 
drug culture is stronger and not everyone understands the dangers. 
(Raw thebaine can cause convulsions when consumed.)

Tasmanian officials have been replacing warning signs at poppy 
fields. The old ones said illegal use "may cause death." The new 
warning says, "Has caused deaths."

'You Can Pop a Gene In'

While walking along the edge of Mr. Mackinnon's field, Mr. Kile 
noticed a plant a few inches high growing in an adjacent area of 
untilled dirt. He bent down and ripped it out, tap root and all. 
Poppies that grow from stray seeds on unlicensed land, he said, have 
to be sprayed or plowed under, a task overseen by a special Tasmanian 
state agency. He also keeps a wary eye out for pests like downy mildew.

The drug companies say they have the answer to plant pests: the tools 
of genetic engineering. "If a disease comes along, you can pop a gene 
in," Mr. Kile said.

Agronomists have already mapped much of the opium poppy's genome. But 
Tasmania has had two consecutive five-year bans on genetic 
engineering in agriculture. The second will expire in November, and 
Jeremy Rockliff, Tasmania's minister for primary industries, said the 
state government plans to introduce legislation to extend a broad ban 
for another five years. Poppy farmers and the pharmaceutical 
companies want an exemption.

Surprisingly little consensus exists on what kind of genetic 
engineering would be done, if authorized. During a recent dinner 
interview in Canberra after a day of lobbying national officials, 
Keith Rice, the chief executive of Poppy Growers Tasmania, and Mr. 
Williams, the same group's president, sharply disagreed with each 
other on whether the industry should genetically modify poppies to 
add resistance to Roundup, a Monsanto product that is one of the 
world's most widely used herbicides.

Mr. Williams said that introducing Roundup resistance was a bad idea 
because it would make it harder to spray and kill poppies like the 
one Mr. Kile had found. If herbicide resistance spread, drug-control 
officials elsewhere might struggle to kill illegal opium plants.

But Mr. Rice strongly disagreed, saying Tasmanian farmers should be 
able to spray their fields with Roundup to kill all the weeds, 
leaving only the resistant poppy plants alive. That would sharply 
reduce costs and help eliminate the need for growing poppies in 
other, less secure locations.

Either way, farmers here say that if Tasmania does not allow genetic 
engineering, it will probably happen elsewhere, including around 
Melbourne, where there is no comparable ban. Their worry is that this 
scenic island of historic towns and bucolic hills may become little 
more than another quaint farming area if it does not act.

"If Tasmania continues with a ban on it," said Michael Badcock, 
another longtime farmer,   "Tasmania may get left behind."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom