babble home
rabble.ca - news for the rest of us
today's active topics


Post New Topic  Post A Reply
FAQ | Forum Home
  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» babble   » current events   » international news and politics   » Afghan opium licensing is a road-map to stability

Email this thread to someone!    
Author Topic: Afghan opium licensing is a road-map to stability
Dana Larsen
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 10033

posted 19 September 2006 09:21 PM      Profile for Dana Larsen   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The other thread about Licensing Afghanistan to Grow Legal Opium Poppies was getting pretty long, so I'm starting a new thread on the same topic.

Here's something I wrote, or more accurately cribbed together from other sources. I'd appreciate comments and feedback on this.


-----
A recent study shows how licensing legal opium production in Afghanistan would increase security and stability.

Licensing would move poppy crops away from the illegal drug trade and into the legal economy. Such a plan would provide Afghan farmers with a legitimate income and create a stable tax base for the government.

"Opium licensing is a road-map to stability," says Emmanuel Reinert, Director of The Senlis Council, a European think-tank which has been studying the Afghan opium trade. "The current drug policy in Afghanistan has completely failed to control opium production and has undermined development and security efforts."

Global shortage of pain medicines

Legal Afghani opium could be used to meet the global need for pain-relief medicines such as morphine and codeine. According to both the World Health Organization and the International Narcotics Control Board, there is a severe global shortage of essential pain relief medications, particularly in the developing world.

Developing countries are home to 80% of the world's population, but they consume just 6% of the medical opioids. In these poor countries, including Afghanistan, most people with cancer, AIDS and other painful conditions have little or no access to legal pain relief medications, and so they live and die in agony.

Meeting the global need for pain medications would require 10,000 tons of opium a year - more than twice Afghanistan's current production.

"The United States wants Afghanistan to destroy its potentially merciful crop," wrote the New York Times in a 2005 editorial. "But why not bolster the country's stability and end both the pain and the trafficking problems, by licensing Afghanistan with the International Narcotics Control Board to sell its opium legally?"

Eradication efforts bring harm

As part of Operation Enduring Freedom, Canadian forces have been put at risk through the policy of eradicating of poppy fields. The Canadian government is known to fund poppy eradication efforts. Poppy eradication contributes to instability and public insecurity by removing the livelihoods of rural communities.

Canadian and British troops do not carry out eradication, but instead provide security for the Afghan labourers and militiamen who have been hired to burn and plough up poppy crops.

Yet despite eradication efforts, illegal opium production still accounts for at least half of Afghanistan's economic base. Right now, all of the opium produced in Afghanistan is turned into illegal products, which are sold on streets around the world.

On September 5, 2006, the New York Times described areas of the province of Helmand as "the epicentre of a Taliban resurgence and an explosion in drug cultivation that has claimed the lives of 106 US and NATO soldiers this year and doubled American casualty rates countrywide."

Opium licensing programs have been operating successfully in Australia, France, India and Turkey for the past few decades. In India an average of 130,000 farmers legally cultivate poppy each year.

Because farmers aren't the ones who make the biggest portion of profits in the illegal drug trade, purchasing the Afghan poppy crop at competitive rates would be relatively affordable. According to the New York Times, "even if we paid exactly what the drug lords do, the entire Afghani crop would cost only about $600 million."

The Senlis Council commissioned and coordinated the study with experts from major international universities and institutions: The Universities of Toronto, Calgary, Lisbon, Ghent, Wageningen, Kabul and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law all participated in the Report.

http://www.senliscouncil.net/


From: Vancouver | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Buddy Kat
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 13234

posted 21 September 2006 11:07 AM      Profile for Buddy Kat   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yes opium licensing is very lucrative. The Burma opium company which was run by Tony Blairs daddy proved that.

Opium runs the bank of america..without it they are bankrupt. Bin laden knew this and if you grew opium you got yer head chopped off. Now look at the result. Record opium being produced.

It's all coming out in the wash...


From: Saskatchewan | Registered: Sep 2006  |  IP: Logged
2 ponies
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 11096

posted 21 September 2006 03:00 PM      Profile for 2 ponies   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Buddy Kat – do you have any sources available regarding the claim that opium runs the bank of America? I’m not being facetious I'd just like to do some reading if you have any recommends. Are you referring to “legitimate” opium like morphine production? Is the bank of America underwriting pharmaceutical companies and keeping the drug trade illegal to keep the cost of morphine and other “legitimate” opium derivatives high? Or is there some clandestine link to illegal cartels of some kind that you’re referring to?

[ 21 September 2006: Message edited by: 2 ponies ]


From: Sask | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged
Lawrence Day
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 12732

posted 21 September 2006 09:22 PM      Profile for Lawrence Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
some refs: http://whale.to/b/ruppert1.html

or

http://www.robert-fisk.com/lies_about_taliban_heroin.htm

Of course just having big pharma buy the poppies
for morphine etc would be vastly cheaper than costly and futile prohibition.

But this should be a bargaining chip.
And due to track record U.S. and Britain can't credibly negotiate, but nonaggressive countries like Canada and Netherlands can, and should.

The word 'taliban' means students. But, like the young warrior in Rambo 3, their education is incomplete. They know the Koran inside out, and its extreme interpretations, but really they haven't a clue why the majority of the world found their governance insufferable.

We have to explain it and they have to explain their bottom line regarding how much moderation of
their position would be satisfactory to them if the NATO forces were to thereby withdraw.

A truce that lasted throughout negotiation would require a Taliban promise that any reconstruction projects, schools, hospitals etc, would not be destroyed as soon as we didn't protect them.

Then, the longer the negotiations went on,
the better it would be for the local populace.

It looks like win-win to me.


From: Toronto | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged
Dana Larsen
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 10033

posted 23 September 2006 10:24 AM      Profile for Dana Larsen   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The New York Times has again come out in favour of this proposal, adding their support to a similar policy for Bolivian coca:

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1266/a03.html

READING THE COCA LEAVES
Sat, 23 Sep 2006
Source: New York Times (NY)

Drug prohibition in Bolivia and Afghanistan has done exactly what alcohol prohibition did in America: it has financed organized crime.

The only workable solution is to repeal prohibition. Give Afghan poppy growers a chance to sell opium for legal painkilling medicines; give Andean peasants a legal international market for their crops in products like gum, lozenges, tea and other drinks. As Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance proposes, "Put the coca back in Coca-Cola."


From: Vancouver | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 23 September 2006 10:40 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Lawrence Day:
some refs: [A truce that lasted throughout negotiation would require a Taliban promise that any reconstruction projects, schools, hospitals etc, would not be destroyed as soon as we didn't protect them.

It sounds good to me, Lawrence. But wouldn't asking them to stop bombing schools and hospitals have been the equivalent of asking the contras to do the same in 1980's Nicaragua ?. I mean, the common theme here, their whole raison d'etre, was to slay secular socialist thought at its foundation level in both Afghanistan and Nicaragua. The entire approach to staving off communism in both countries has been to withold basic health care and education from whole nations of people in the western quest to divide and conquer. Expecting western powers to do the rational is irrational. In this world, up is always down, and to quote an old movie about a Turkish prison, there will be trouble if you walk to the left. Because that way leads to communism.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8273

posted 23 September 2006 11:07 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
In addition to being ineffective, this [opium eradication] program alienates the population and materially assists the Taliban. It is, moreover, the wrong policy, given the global shortage of essential painkillers -- morphine and codeine -- that are obtained from opium. The poppies are needed and, if properly regulated, could provide a legal source of income to impoverished Afghan farmers while, at the same time, depriving the drug lords and the Taliban of much of their income.
....
The current policy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United States seeks to destroy poppy crops and punish the farmers.
....
By 2015, the World Health Organization estimates there will be 10 million cancer cases per year in the developing countries, in addition to the millions of cases of HIV/AIDS. The WHO describes the expected demand for opium-based medicines as a "world pain crisis."

Traffic in morphine and codeine is licensed by the International Narcotics Control Board. The INCB points out that the richest nations (the United States, United Kingdom, France, Japan, Germany, Australia and Canada) consume nearly all of the world's opiates, leaving 80 per cent of the globe's population virtually without.

Could opiates made from Afghan poppies make up the shortfall, if the INCB were to license growing there, as it does in France, India and Turkey? Undoubtedly. Meeting the global demand for pain medication has been estimated to require about double the current Afghan production. Maia Szalavitz, a senior fellow at Stats, a media watchdog group, has estimated the cost of buying the entire Afghan poppy crop at the current market price, set today by Afghan drug lords, as about $600-million -- less than the $780-million the United States budgeted last year for eradication.
....
Moving to this new regime of lawful poppy and opiate production causes difficulties. Not because the international community would be required to legalize any substance not currently legal, but because it must agree to extend the privilege of legal production to a jurisdiction accustomed, till now, only to the illegal.

Not to do this, however, would represent a culpable failure of imagination on our part, in which we condemned the poor of rural Afghanistan to crime because we regard this as their proper state. John Polanyi



From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Buddy Kat
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 13234

posted 23 September 2006 11:56 AM      Profile for Buddy Kat   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by 2 ponies:
Buddy Kat – do you have any sources available regarding the claim that opium runs the bank of America? I’m not being facetious I'd just like to do some reading if you have any recommends. Are you referring to “legitimate” opium like morphine production? Is the bank of America underwriting pharmaceutical companies and keeping the drug trade illegal to keep the cost of morphine and other “legitimate” opium derivatives high? Or is there some clandestine link to illegal cartels of some kind that you’re referring to?

[ 21 September 2006: Message edited by: 2 ponies ]



Books have been written about the subject..All of the above. Just recently the pres of venezuela has made claims that the cia and dea have been infiltrated by drug dealers. Watch the issue derailment experts drail it with the latest (bin laden is dead rumor). The international mob stretchs to the top of the elite. As far as drug companies go...opium by itself is easy and cheap to produce ..the real money comes in extracting the many many products (alkaloids) and marketing them seperatly for high profit.One reason for illegiality?

As far as trafficking goes the facts have presented itself already.You must remember that north america is but a small fraction (population) of opium users compared to the eastern countries (major population) hence very lucrative.

You can trace the bank of america's power to when opium became illegal and follow the trail. A trail that has led to creating an underground blackmarket in many drugs. This under ground infrastructure is uncrackable and vast and is international.No taxs are paid in this loophole for the elite, hence extremely lucrative. This is the main reason for illegiality.Even paul martins ship got busted for illegal opium transport after he won the election(scrubbed under the table rather quickly -wouldn't you say).

If the international drug cartels removed their money(trillions) from the bank...there laundering schemes..investing in legitamte corporations that turn stock maximization into profit for the elite would collapse.

The pensions plans of governments would collapse .It's a catch 22 if you will, and when push comes to shove they will give in to the elite,but we all know that.

Do the research it's all out there.


Funny - Harper in his surprise visit to Canadian troops mentioned in his speech" Fighting to keep heroin of Canadian streets"...what a joke..more opium hence heroin will be , and is produced than ever before!I guess no one informed him yet or gave him a piece of the opium pie. He sure isn't spouting off like that anymore now is he?

Now it's a differant reason....when all else fails ..spreading democratic values....and protecting people in another country from themselves who are opium drug lords.

[ 23 September 2006: Message edited by: Buddy Kat ]

[ 23 September 2006: Message edited by: Buddy Kat ]


From: Saskatchewan | Registered: Sep 2006  |  IP: Logged
Dana Larsen
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 10033

posted 23 September 2006 09:28 PM      Profile for Dana Larsen   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Thanks for posting that Spector. I'm glad to see the Globe & Mail printing articles like that!

i am promoting this idea as much as I can! This is a real solution to many of our problems in Afgnanistan.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Dana Larsen
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 10033

posted 25 September 2006 12:14 AM      Profile for Dana Larsen   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A successful opium licensing system was implemented in Turkey in the 1970s. At the time, Turkey was one of the main producers of opium for the illegal drug trade.

“The Turkish Government at the time realised that forced crop eradication was not a realistic option,” says Reinert of the Senlis Council. “They worked together with the United States to implement a licensing system and negotiated preferential trade agreements between the US and Turkey. Today the US still buys opium for medicine from Turkey.”

Today about 100,000 Turkish farmers hold licenses to grow poppy, and about 600,000 Turks make a livelihood out of the opium-industry.

Opium licensing programs have also been operating successfully for decades in Australia, France and India.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Abdul_Maria
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 11105

posted 25 September 2006 08:28 AM      Profile for Abdul_Maria     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
one of the older Russian guys in our community garden grows opium poppies. when i asked him about it, he acted as if he didn't speak English.

one of the women on the waiting list told me the "old hippie recipe" for laudanum ... soak the opium poppies in wine, the alcohol in the wine acts as a solvent for the opiates.

i live with chronic pain & have prescriptions for anti-inflammatories & Vitamin 420. when i was in Vancouver a doctor offered to give me a prescription for morphine. i declined because i'm afraid i couldn't handle the withdrawal.

a mutual friend takes 1000 mg of morphine a day. you would think it would be quite stupefying, but it's not. he was paralyzed in a car crash and has perpetual back pain. he also paints, quite well i might add, and sits on community boards and lives in a coop on Vancouver's west end.

i would like to try the laudanum prescription. i was thinking if i let the treated wine sit that the alcohol would evaporate, leaving me with grape juice and morphine. i'm hoping that that is a concoction that would allow me to be functional.

in America they make a big deal about "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness". well, the pursuit of happiness starts with freedom from pain, or the ability to manage chronic pain, IMHO.


From: San Fran | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged
Dana Larsen
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 10033

posted 25 September 2006 05:45 PM      Profile for Dana Larsen   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
i live with chronic pain & have prescriptions for anti-inflammatories & Vitamin 420. when i was in Vancouver a doctor offered to give me a prescription for morphine. i declined because i'm afraid i couldn't handle the withdrawal.

If you are in pain then morphine doesn't usually produce the same withdrawal. The opiates go where they're needed, and if you wean yourself off properly as your pain eases then you'll be fine.

And if you're in chronic pain with a permanent condition, then you won't need to worry about withdrawal as you'd be using morphine for the rest of your life.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Bubbles
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3787

posted 25 September 2006 08:20 PM      Profile for Bubbles        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Personally I like the idea of freeing the growing of opium poppies, in that it would gives the Afghans a means of creating a product that they can use for trade. The situation right now just plays into the hands of the warlords. The warlords must be having a chuckle at our attempts to destroy opium production. The scarcer the product the more valuable it becomes.

But I suspect Afghan opium production will be a short-lived boom, in that it could be so easily produced elsewhere and/or by other means. What then? Organic cotton? Wool? And their products? Or a never-ending series of Afghan war movies, just like we had a seemingly never-ending series of westerns? I can just see it, Osama taking on the dragon flying hard heads from Imperialstan .

[ 25 September 2006: Message edited by: Bubbles ]


From: somewhere | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged
sgm
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5468

posted 30 September 2006 12:22 PM      Profile for sgm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
According to this story, some are now considering an aerial eradication program to destroy Afghan poppies:
quote:
With profits from this spring's record opium crop fueling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they are considering a once unthinkable way to deal with the scourge: spraying poppy fields with herbicide.

Afghans including President Hamid Karzai are deeply opposed to spraying the crop. After nearly three decades of war, Western science and assurances can do little to assuage their fears of chemicals being dropped from airplanes.

But U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington are pushing for it. And on Thursday the country's top drug enforcement official said he would contemplate spraying opium crops - even with airborne crop-dusters - if other efforts fail to cut the size of the coming year's crop.

"This year, we'll wait and see how it goes. Next year, the 2008 season, we will consider it," said Lt. Gen. Mohammed Daoud Daoud on the sidelines of an anti-poppy gathering in Jalalabad, the ancient and verdant capital of Nangahar province, once the heart of Afghanistan's poppy belt.


The experience of aerial eradication programs in Colombia, where the US and Colombian governments have pursued them for years to destroy coca crops, has not been a happy one for the Colombians whose crops are sprayed.

The Center for International Policy, which follows US anti-drug operations in Colombia, had this to say in a 2006 report on aerial eradication efforts:

quote:
The real lesson we can draw from the 2005 coca numbers is that fumigating an area is no substitute for governing it. Aerial herbicide fumigation appeared to be a shortcut, a cheap way to reduce drug supplies without having to engage in “nationbuilding,” establishing a government presence and a legal economy in Colombia’s vast, neglected, impoverished rural zones. Only governance – which will require a costly, longterm political and military effort with mostly Colombian funds – will bring real reductions in Colombia’s coca crop. Fumigation is a poor substitute. Instead of a shortcut, fumigation has proven to be a dead end.
Obviously, there will be important political and geographic differences between Colombia and Afghanistan, but the failures of US anti-drug policy in Latin America should give pause to anyone thinking of adopting similar 'short-cut' strategies and tactics in Afghanistan.

[ 30 September 2006: Message edited by: sgm ]


From: I have welcomed the dawn from the fields of Saskatchewan | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Dana Larsen
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 10033

posted 08 October 2006 07:07 PM      Profile for Dana Larsen   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
An aerial spraying campaign in Afghanistan will be the final nail in the coffin of any hope in creating a stable democratic nation. It will alienate all our remaining supporters there and drive farmers into the hands of warlords. Afghanistan will become a nation permanently at war, much like Colombia.

It is time for Canada to promote a better solution to this problem. Canada could single-handedly buy the entire Afghan opium crop if we wanted, it would be a great investment in global peace and international security.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3276

posted 08 October 2006 08:44 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Lawrence Day:
just having big pharma buy the poppies
for morphine etc would be vastly cheaper than costly and futile prohibition.


More and more people are more aware of the "licensed morphine production" option. It's not a crackpot solution at all.

For example, this morning on CBC they interviewed Canada's Nobel Prize winning chemist, John Polanyi. He explained once again the serious shortage of morphine and codeine in the third world -- "The Pain Crisis" -- and the system by which licensed poppy growers in Turkey and India are the source of our morphine and codeine, which the pharmaceutical companies sell for a lot more than the poppy growers are paid, and half of Afghanistan's GNP comes from opium sales.

This time the interviewer was on top of the story: he asked "wouldn't the pharmaceutical companies object to all this new morphine and codeine coming on the market?" Polanyi was ready: he said "Yes, I've been thinking about that, and I think the answer is an Afghan brand on the product, for sale only to the third world, at a lower price than in the developed world, but still a higher price than the Afghan farmer gets."

This is even more obvious than the situation in Columbia and Bolivia with coca and cocaine. Whatever you think of the war on cocaine, licensed morphine production is a non-controversial option. What's stopping it? Simply "big pharma"? There must be more involved than a simple capitalist conspiracy?


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 08 October 2006 08:59 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Wilf Day:

There must be more involved than a simple capitalist conspiracy?

Well if American Stanton Friedman is anyone to go by, the CIA should know all about it. Stanton said that ufology groups took the CIA to court and using FOI requests to obtain secret government info in ufo's. They said,

ufo nuts: You have stuff on ufo's we'd like to look at.
CIA: No we don't.
ufo nuts Yes you do
CIA: No we don't, and stop bothering us.
After some court battles and citing FOI, the CIA responded with,
CIA" Oh yes, we did find 900 plus page top secret document. Here it is with 80 percent redacted for your reading pleasure.

The CIA has been described as a dope delivery service with a percentage of the proceeds funelled toward covert military operations all over the world and dirty tricks in general. Sure they know about opium and cocaine smuggling into the U.S. and other countries. They're the biggest dopes around.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged

All times are Pacific Time  

Post New Topic  Post A Reply Close Topic    Move Topic    Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
Hop To:

Contact Us | rabble.ca | Policy Statement

Copyright 2001-2008 rabble.ca