Opium licensing

Opium licensing is a policy instrument used to counter illegal drug cultivation and production. It has been used in countries such as Turkey and India to curb illegal opium production. The main mechanism used under opium licensing is a shift from cultivation and/or production for the illegal market towards legal uses such as the production of essential medicines such as morphine and codeine. Currently, an international think tank called The Senlis Council is investigating whether this policy option could be used to solve the massive drug problem in Afghanistan. The organization is calling for a new village-based poppy for medicines system that would be able to boost rural development, create stability and increase the grip the Karzai Administration has on isolated poppy growing areas in the country. Equally, cheap Afghan-made could respond to the acute shortage of poppy-based medicines internationally. In June 2007, the Council released a technical blueprint for a poppy for medicine project in Afghanistan and called for a pilot project to create Afghan Morphine to be put in place at the next planting season (see The Senlis Council: "Poppy for Medicine" [1])

The Senlis Council has been active in Afghanistan since 2005, where it has been investigating the local conditions on the ground. Pointing to the promising research findings so far, The Senlis Council is urging the international community to start scientific pilot projects at the village level to further investigate the policy option of opium licensing. Current counter narcotic policies in Afghanistan are focusing predominantly on crop eradication, which threatens the fragile stability of rural communities where legal economic alternatives are hardly or not available.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) revealed in 2006 that opium production in Afghanistan had gone up with 49 percent, while poppy crop cultivation increased with an astonishing 59 percent, despite the efforts of the Afghan government and the international community to curb the Afghan drug problem. That is one of the reasons why policy makers are slowly starting to consider other options to put an end to what can currently be considered the main obstacle on the road to development and security in Afghanistan.

In a recent article in the Washington Quarterly, Peter van Ham and Jorrit Kamminga argue that the international community should establish a pilot project and investigate a licensing scheme to start the production of medicines such as morphine and codeine from poppy crops to help it escape the quagmire of economic misery and political instability:

There is no time to waste, as Afghanistan could well be slipping back to chaos and civil strife. Tackling the drug economy is central to easing Afghanistan's ills, and the only remaining alternative is the poppies for peace proposal, using medicinal poppy cultivation as bridge to sustainable development and lasting security in Afghanistan.

The Bush Administration seems to disagree, at least for now. In February of 2007, the U.S. Department of State, through the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, issued a response to the Senlis Council proposal. They argue that the price difference between licit and illicit poppies would discourage farmers from participating, a problem that could be overcome only by massive subsidies. The United Nations International Narcotics Control Board finds little to no unmet demand for licit Afghan poppies in international markets. While Turkey, India, Pakistan, and Bolivia have adopted similar plans, decades of conflict have left most of Afghanistan country radically underdeveloped, both economically and institutionally. Large portions of the country remain largely under the control of Taliban insurgents, and these conditions pose serious difficulties for a successful licensing program.