Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
CNRS – PRODIG
Asia Times
February 1, 2006
In June 1906, Charles Henry Brent, the first Protestant Episcopal
Church bishop of the Philippines and a staunch opponent of the opium
trade, wrote to president Theodore Roosevelt to ask for the United
States to call an international conference to enforce anti-opium measures
in China.
The conference was held in Shanghai in 1909. One hundred years after
Bishop Brent's letter, the global prohibition of opium and certain
other drugs has largely failed, in spite of, or maybe because of,
more than 30 years of the "war on drugs" launched in 1971
by the administration of US president Richard Nixon.
This is what was stressed at a conference on "Drug Production
and State Stability" recently held in Paris, when Alfred McCoy,
professor of history at the University of Wisconsin and author of
The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, explained
that, "after fighting five drug wars in 30 years at a cost of
US$150 billion, Washington has presided over a [fivefold] increase"
in the world illicit-opium supply, from 1,000 tonnes in 1970 to between
5,000 and 6,000 tonnes in the mid-2000s.
This was exemplified in late 2005 when the United Nations Office
on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) confirmed that Afghanistan was still and
by far the world's first producing country of illicit opium, despite
alternative development efforts, eradication measures, and widely
lauded achievements in democracy and state-building in the country.
Clearly, as has now been stated by many observers and analysts, the
danger for Afghanistan is that a hastened suppression or eradication
program will, in the absence of alternative livelihoods being widely
promoted, damage the fragile rural economy, prove counterproductive
in the mid-term, and impede sustainable solutions to the Afghan crisis.
Indeed, in a 2004 interview, Doris Buddenberg, the head of UNODC
in Afghanistan, said, "Eradication usually does not bring about
a sustainable reduction of poppy crop - it is a one-time, short-term
effort. Also eradication usually pushes the prices up. As we have
seen from the Taliban period, the one-year ban on opium-poppy cultivation
increased prices enormously the following year and it became extremely
attractive for farmers to cultivate poppy."
However, in December 2005, only a few weeks after having lauded "the
largest decrease [of opium-poppy cultivation] ever recorded in a single
year in any country", Buddenberg said there were "signs
cultivation may increase next year in many areas, in part because
of pressure on farmers to grow opium poppies and their own concerns
about making a living", thus without clearly acknowledging that
the so-called "success" in reducing opium-poppy cultivation
in Afghanistan in 2004-05 had already been and was still to be largely
counterproductive.
In such a context, where both interdiction and development have failed
to solve the "opium problem" in Afghanistan, because interdiction
without development amounts to further deteriorating the livelihoods
of opium farmers, and alternative development is far from having been
implemented with adequate economic means and political determination,
a rather new, but unrealistic, proposal has emerged: the licensing
of Afghan opium for production of pharmaceutical morphine.
Described as "a truly winning solution" by many, the proposal
of the Senlis Council, an "international drug-policy think-tank"
based in Paris, consists of licensing Afghan opium for the production
of legal medicines such as morphine and codeine as a way to respond
to the urgent need to significantly reduce Afghanistan's illegal opium
production and trade, but also as a way to overcome the "significant
global shortage of opium-based medicines such as morphine and codeine",
a problem "felt most acutely in the developing world".
This proposal, however, is based on false or inexact premises, on
at least two levels: regarding the world market on the one hand, and
national and local opium-farming communities on the other hand.
Supply and demand of opioid analgesics
According to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which
is in charge of examining on a regular basis issues affecting the
supply of and demand for opiates used for medical purposes, the supply
of such opiates has for years been "at levels well in excess
of global demand".
In fact, as stocks continue to be more than sufficient to cover global
demand for one year, the INCB even recommends reducing the production
of opiate raw materials. Nevertheless, the INCB stresses that "the
low consumption of opioid analgesics for the treatment of moderate
to severe pain, especially in developing countries, continues to be
a matter of great concern".
"In 2003, six countries together accounted for 79% of global
consumption of morphine" while "developing countries, which
represent about 80% of the world's population, accounted for only
about 6%" of its global consumption. Thus, for the INCB, the
urgency is more "to raise awareness of the necessity to assess
the actual medical needs for opiates" in the world than to increase
the production of legal medical morphine in countries such as Afghanistan.
This is easily understandable when one knows that most governments
in the world did not respond to the INCB questionnaire on their medical
needs and that information about half of the needs of the world's
population was insufficient.
However, simply raising levels of morphine production, whether by
licensing opium production in Afghanistan or by increasing the yields
of current producers, is unlikely to increase the medical consumption
of morphine and codeine in the world.
The recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) that morphine
and codeine be used as analgesics are too often impeded by obstacles
that are not, or not only, supply-related: concerns about drug addiction
and drug diversion, restrictive national laws, insufficient import
or manufacture, but also deficiencies in national health-care delivery
systems, insufficient training, etc.
Of course, the demand for modern analgesics is also related to the
importance of conventional or allopathic medicine with regard to local
traditions and beliefs. In China for example, according to WHO, traditional
herbal preparations account for 30-50% of the total medicinal consumption,
while in Africa up to 80% of the population uses traditional medicine
for primary health care.
Thus, obviously, the world's medical consumption of opiates is far
from being directly dependent on supply and demand, and price contingencies,
as was actually hinted by the Senlis Council itself when it stressed
that "in 2002, 77% of the world's morphine was consumed by seven
rich countries: [the] US, the UK, Italy, Australia, France, Spain
and Japan", but that, according to official figures, "even
in these countries only 24% of moderate to severe pain-relief need
was being met".
The fact that medical consumption of opiates is low even in rich
morphine-producing countries clearly shows that the consumption of
opiate-based painkillers is determined by factors more complex than
only those of the market.
Indian licit vs. Afghan illicit opium production
As far as Afghanistan and its opium farmers are concerned now, the
licensing of the illicit opium supply is very unlikely to help develop
them economically.
First, it is important to understand that while legal opium-poppy
cultivation is undertaken for pharmaceutical use by 12 countries (Australia,
China, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, India, Japan, Slovakia,
Spain, Macedonia, Turkey and the United Kingdom), only one of them,
India, produces opium, the latex that bleeds, coagulates and is harvested
from incised opium-poppy capsules. The 11 other actually grow opium
poppies to harvest poppy straw and produce concentrate of poppy straw
(CPS) in the context of a modern mechanized agriculture that resorts
for the most part to combine harvesters on large tracts of cultivated
land.
Conversely, because opium harvesting is a long and arduous manual
process, it requires a numerous and, more than anything, cheap local
workforce if the opium and morphine production process is to be economically
viable. For that reason, and also because of international agreements
derived from the role the opium economy played in its colonial past,
opium is only legally produced in India.
Of course, since 12 countries already produce raw opium materials
to make morphine, codeine and thebaine, and have significantly increased
the concentration of alkaloids in opium-poppy plants, the INCB, pursuant
to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, wishes to "to
avoid the proliferation of supply sites" to prevent diversion
of opium-poppy plants and seeds licitly produced to the illicit market.
Diversion from the licit to the illicit market occurs much more easily
with opium than concentrate of poppy straw, as the Indian example
shows us.
In India, legal opium producing occurs in selected tracts in Madhya
Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The Indian central government
sets an opium minimum qualifying yield (MQY) according to the yields
reported by farmers the previous years. During the 2004-05 crop year
(8,770 licensed hectares), MQY of 58 kilograms per hectare in Madhya
Pradesh and Rajasthan and of 49kg in Uttar Pradesh had to be achieved
by opium farmers to be eligible for the renewal of their license in
2005-06.
Cultivators are issued a license for growing poppies and the entire
opium produced by all farmers is purchased by and only by the Central
Bureau of Narcotics at a price fixed by the central government. The
price paid to the farmers depends on the yields achieved, with farmers
producing more opium getting paid a higher price per kilogram: in
2004-05, the minimum price paid per kilogram was Rs750 (US$17) for
yields up to 44kg per hectare. The maximum price paid was Rs2,200
for yields above 100kg/ha. The average national yield was 56kg/ha
and was paid at a price Rs1,150 per kilogram.
However, it is important to bear in mind that, to try to prevent
diversion to the illicit market, in 2004-05 the maximum licensed area
to be cultivated in opium poppies was 0.10 hectare. Therefore, the
maximum income that Indian farmers can derive from legal opium production
is limited by fixed prices and by limitation of areas cultivated by
each of them.
With such low prices paid to Indian opium farmers, diversion to the
illegal market, where opium can fetch prices as much as four to five
times the minimum government price, clearly takes place; although
there is no reliable estimate of such diversion.
The 2005 International Control Strategy Report of the US Department
of State stresses that "in 2004, the government of India discovered
and shut down six morphine base laboratories in India's opium-growing
areas; four in Uttar Pradesh and two in Madhya Pradesh".
The fact that the central government raises the MQY and the official
price paid to farmers is clearly not enough to keep some of them from
diverting part of their harvest to the illegal market. It is worth
noting that the CBN recently tightened its control on opium farming
and against diversion, drastically lowering the number of hectares
licensed (from 21,141 in 2003-04 to 8,771 in 2004-05) and the number
of farmers licensed (from 105,697 in 2003-04 to 87,682 in 2004-05).
Shortcomings of opium licensing in Afghanistan
The proposal to license opium production in Afghanistan thus raises
an important question: Would the prices paid to opium farmers be high
enough to provide them with a sufficient income and to enable the
development of the Afghan rural economy while, in the meantime, preventing
opium diversion from the licit to the illicit market?
In Afghanistan, opium prices have varied greatly during the past
decade, ranging from $23 to $350 per kilogram of fresh opium at harvest
time. In 2005, the average farm-gate price of fresh opium at harvest
time was $102 per kilogram (average yield: 39 kg/ha) and 309,000 families,
or about 2 million persons (8.7% of the population) were involved
in opium-poppy cultivation, itinerant workers not included.
Such prices, which are far from enriching Afghan opium farmers but
simply allow them to cope with poverty, only need to be compared to
those of India to realize that licit opium production in Afghanistan
could not compete with illicit opium production, that most opium farmers
would still have to give up opium production while the others would
see their revenues plummet, and that, considering the limited writ
and power of the Afghan authorities, diversion from the licit to the
illicit market would be unavoidable and would reach much higher proportions
than in India.
More important, licensing opium production in Afghanistan would not
be better than eradication or alternative development at addressing
the causes of the recourse to illegal opium production and would thus
fail to fulfill the international community's objective: the suppression
of illegal opium production. If crop substitution proved to be a failure
in the past decades, why would the substitution of an illegal opium
production for a legal opium production work better by reducing farmers'
income and not addressing the structural factors causing illegal opium
production?
It is crucial to understand that, contrary to what has often been
denounced here and there, opium production is more a consequence of
Afghanistan's lawlessness, instability and poverty than its cause.
Opium production clearly proceeds from poverty and food insecurity,
from Afghanistan to Myanmar and Laos, where it is a coping mechanism
and livelihood strategy.
Opium production is a vital element in the livelihood strategies
of part of the Afghan rural population, providing peasants not only
with a source of income, but also with access to land and credit.
More than opium production as such, it is therefore poverty and the
shortcomings of the Afghan agrarian system that should be tackled.
It is alternative livelihoods that must be promoted, in a way that
counter-narcotics objectives are mainstreamed into national development
strategies and programs, if the causes of opium-poppy cultivation
are to be addressed and illicit opium production eventually curtailed.
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy is a geographer and Centre National
de la Recherche Scientifique research fellow, and produces www.geopium.org
