As they prepare for pending elections, British Conservatives have joined the call for licensing of the Afghan opium crop. The move comes just days after the British Medical Association called for Afghan opium to be processed into heroin and prescribed to addicts.
Conservative leader Lord Howell told parliament last week that the "very dangerous" policy of eradication was "just not working." He said alternatives like licensing the crop needed to be looked at. "The more we try to eradicate, the more poppies seem to get grown," he said. "Trying to stop poor farmers growing poppies to survive and live and feed their families is going to be almost impossible," he said.
Lord Howell's comments came just days after the British Medical Association argued that Afghan opium could be used to help deal with a shortage of prescription heroin, or diamorphine, Dr Vivienne Nathanson, the BMA's head of science and ethics, told the BBC. "If we actually were harvesting this drug from Afghanistan rather than destroying it, we'd be benefiting the population of Afghanistan as well as helping patients and not putting people at risk," said Nathanson. "There must be ways of harvesting it and making sure that the harvest safely reaches the drug industry which would then refine it into diamorphine," she suggested. "It should be possible, and really Government and the international groups that are in Afghanistan should be looking at this and saying how can we convert it from being an illicit crop to a legal crop that is medicinally useful."
Comments
Fatal DrugWarrior Pandemic?
If supporters of Prohibition could be eradicated by fungal, bacterial or viral means, the world would be a far better place.
DrugWarrior-hater
OPIUM
HOW WOULD THE CIA GET FUNDS TO SUPPORT DICTATORS?
This idea betrays ignorance
This idea betrays ignorance of scale.
opium is useful
there is not even an argument on this one; I agree completely with the UK Conservatives on this one. Legalize it, institute a government monopoly, collect the entire crop every year, and sell it over the counter as part of medicines that are also legal.
India has done this, and the policy is the same. I think there's no excuse, given the abject poverty of Afghanistan.
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