In reply to David Hooper:
I didn't catch it but seems a bit odd. On the same subject....i've always thought trying to eradicate opium in Afghanistan is a pointless exercise but hadn't realised there is a massive shortage of opiate based pain killers in the west:
Why, then, was another avenue not explored? Nearly eight years ago, an international think tank, the Senlis Council, proposed an alternative approach: the West should buy the crop. Afghanistan’s poppy farmers would be licensed to produce opium for palliative medicines. There is a world shortage of pain-killing drugs, chiefly morphine and codeine, so why not put the poppy production on a legitimate basis?
At present, opium poppies come mainly from India, where 130,000 accredited farmers raise crops under strict controls. Some are even grown here in the UK, their striking lilac colours visible in the fields of Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Herefordshire. The opium is then processed into pain-killers. The World Health Organisation (WHO) 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, especially with an ageing population. The WHO estimates that about 83 per cent of the world’s population have “low to nonexistent access” to palliative drugs. Needless to say, Afghanistan is one of many developing countries that has little or no access to these medications.
To many looking in from the outside, putting production on a legitimate footing seemed eminently sensible and yet it was peremptorily dismissed by Nato governments. The International Narcotics Control Board, a UN agency, called it “simplistic” and said it “does not take into account the complex situation in the country”. This scepticism might have been well-founded if the UN had come up with a better idea. But it clearly didn’t.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/9279920/How-did-...
