The BMA wades in

The British Medical Association has become the latest organisation to propose channelling Afghanistan’s opium into legal pain-relief. With a diamorphine shortage in the UK, the medical experts are demanding greater access to the drug after forced recourse to less-effective alternatives. But as the International Narcotics Control Board reports, there remain substantial global reserves of morphine; as the British government recognises, dwindling stocks of diamorphine stem from a lack of facilities for chemically converting morphine, not from a lack of supply. The BMA is using this bottleneck to make a geopolitical point.

The proposals of the Senlis Council to licence Afghanistan’s opium are becoming increasingly fashionable but remain seriously flawed. Constructing the facilities to produce diamorphine - heroin - in disparate factories across Afghanistan’s badlands, as Senlis proposes, promises to shove the high-value end of the drugs trade into the hands of insurgents. Few Afghans would reap the benefits of poppy licensing, with only 1% of the cultivatable land dedicated to poppy. Other charities in the country, such as Christian Aid, stress long term support such as irrigation for the other 99%. If Afghanistan stabilises, and if a chronic shortage of morphine does emerge, there will come a time when legalising and regulating the opium trade makes sense. The Senlis Council may be making inroads into western liberal opinion, but its proposals, for now, are good for neither Afghanistan nor the world.