UNODC mugged by reality

Sanho Tree, writing below for the Transform blog, responds to the Guardian report last week that 'UN wants 'flood of drugs' in Afghanistan to devalue opium':

United Nations officials in Afghanistan are attempting to create a "flood of drugs" in the country intended to destroy the value of opium and force poppy farmers to switch to legal crops such as wheat.

After the failure to destroy fields of the scarlet flowers in Afghanistan's volatile south, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says the answer is to stop the drugs from leaving the country in the first place.

"Manual eradication is incompetent and inefficient," UNODC chief Antonio Maria Costa said during a visit to the western Afghan province of Herat. "So we want to see more efforts to stop the flow of drugs across Afghanistan's borders and the hitting of high-value targets to create a market disruption.

"We want to create a flood of drugs within Afghanistan. There will be so much opium inside Afghanistan unable to go out that the price will go down."

It looks like Costa has finally been mugged by reality.

When the Taliban allowed anyone to grow poppies in the late 1990s, the price of a kilo of opium fell to $30 on the streets of Kandahar because of the resulting glut. When Mullah Omar decreed it was no longer consistent with Islamic values to grow poppies in 2000, the prohibitionist price of opium shot up to $740/kilo just before the Sept. 11 attacks.

For the first time that I can recall, a prominent drug warrior has allowed the inconvenient truth of prohibition economics to intrude on his crusade.

Alas, Costa still clings to the idea that opium can still be stopped from leaking across the borders of Afghanistan. Still, the idea of allowing the natural devaluing of illicit crops by stopping eradication is more than a baby step -- it's a sea change in drug war thinking and it stops the counterproductive and inhuman "war" against peasant farmers. Now that he has admitted the futility of shoveling water, we can only hope he will abandon the idea of building a metaphorical wall around the country.

While I truly applaud Costa's belated arrival to the real world, it is still a fairly simplistic solution he has outlined. Since the days of the Silk Road Afghanistan has been been famous for trading by merchants, plundering by bandits, and smuggling by tax evaders. The latter two groups know the terrain better than any Westerner or Google map and I doubt NATO can seal the borders from these people any more than they can keep the Taliban from walking back and forth
to Pakistan. It's also one of the most corrupt countries in the world so a little cash can facilitate a lot of smuggling.

While the addiction rates in Afghanistan are still relatively low and rising, the neighboring countries have a huge addiction and HIV problem as a result of cheap Afghan heroin. The situation is dire and demands real solutions.

Still, I think his policy switch is important for five main reasons:

1) It's the first time a top drug warrior has allowed the law of supply and demand to rear its inconvenient head into policymaking. Will wonders never cease? Once they have acknowledged
this, it's hard to go back and pretend they can still make illicit crops disappear by making them astronomically more valuable in a world where HALF of the human race "subsists" on less than $2/day.

2) It's hard to eradicate in a region where illicit crops have taken root and the trade networks have been established. It's a lot easier to prevent a region from converting to illicit crops in the first place. If farmers transition back to legal crops, those networks could recede and then they might have a chance of preventing their return if there is sufficient aid for infrastructure and credit.

3) Adam Smith's "invisible hand" will be the culprit that motivates farmers to switch crops on their own. It doesn't make NATO forces and the UN into the hated "bad guys" who eradicated the fields of peasant farmers and drove them into the arms of the Taliban. The Taliban's fatal mistake in 2000 was in imposing total prohibition of poppy cultivation. While it made some Taliban commanders fabulously wealthy because they had cornered the market on warehoused opium at pre-prohibition prices, it turned farmers against them because they starved and suffered as a result so they were happy to help NATO forces.

4) When the opium prices fall, the Taliban will have a harder time funding their war and fewer lives should be lost. This could hasten the withdrawal of combat troops and the decreased violence should allow for more effective development assistance -- assuming Congress doesn't repeat the mistakes of the last Afghan war against the Soviets. To recall, we wiped our asses and left as soon as the Soviets retreated thus leaving a perfect vacuum for civil war and eventual Taliban victory.

5) They can now stop punishing the weakest of the weak and the poorest of the poor. Forced eradication without providing viable alternative livelihoods is not only counterproductive, but it is also monstrously cruel.

See previous blogs:

• Afghan Opium and the Empor0r's New Clothes

• Unintended consequences - side effects and contra indications of Global prohibition
  
  

Ministry of Defence propaganda and the Afghan drug war

The media today is full of reports about a massive military operation in the Helmand province of Afghanistan, codenamed DIESEL. Closer examination reveals reporting of the operation to have been dramatically propagandized by the Ministry of Defense, with the media acting as their willing - if somewhat confused - accomplices. Somehow a story about less than a £100,000 worth of raw opium has been transformed into a story about £50,000,000 worth of 'deadly heroin'.

Reports of the story in different media are strangely contradictory:

The Sun told us that

“Enough raw materials to produce heroin with a street value of £50million was seized from a sprawling network of compounds.”

The Press Association reported that:

“A daring military operation in Afghanistan has seized heroin and drug-making chemicals with an estimated final street value of more than £50 million”.

The headline in the usually reliable Guardian was

“British troops seize £50m of Taliban narcotics”

with the coverage noting that:

“Troops recovered more than 400kg of raw opium in one drug factory and nearly 800kg of heroin in another.”

From the Telegraph we learnt that:

“British forces have seized £50 million of heroin and killed at least 20 Taliban fighters in a daring raid that dealt a significant blow to the insurgents in Afghanistan."

the Independent told us that:

“Troops seize £50m of Afghan opium”

Whilst the for the BBC it was

“Raids seize £50m of Afghan heroin”

One of the MOD issued action shots: In the Daily Mail this image is subtitled with:

"Operation Diesel: British troops have taken £50million worth of heroin during an attack on a remote Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan"

These are just 7 out of the 100s of reports (600+ listed on Google news), each of the above with a different version of events. They cant all be right, so which one is? Bizarrely enough, a cursory check of the Ministry of Defence's online account reveals they are all wrong.

The MOD website account describes three separate drug finds: one of ‘over 60kg of wet opium’, another of ‘over 400kg of raw opium’ and a third, ‘the largest find of opium on the operation, nearly 800kg’. Along with this opium a “massive supply of the essential chemicals required to make heroin were discovered; sacks of Ammonium Chloride, barrels of Acetic Anhydride and other chemicals that were piled up ready for use”.

So operation DIESEL, in reality, resulted in the finding and destruction of somewhere in the region of 1300kg of unprocessed opium and an a quantity of the chemicals required to process opium into heroin. A few quick sums: According to the UNODC the 'farm-gate' price for opium in Afghanistan in 2008 was $85 a kilo, and these DIESEL stockpiles were presumably not far from the Helmand farms on which they were produced. 1300 x 85 = $110,500, in other words, opium worth approximately £78,000 to the Taliban, at this point in the supply chain.

Were this 1300kg of opium to have been turned into low grade heroin (and we can reasonably suspect that this was what was going to happen), on the basis that it takes around 10kg of opium to produce 1 kg of heroin, it would have produced around 130kg. If the ‘street price’ of a kilo of heroin in the UK is estimated to be around £50- 75,000, then 130 kilos would earn you somewhere between £6.5 and £9.7 million. A very large sum of money certainly, albeit nowhere near £50 million.

The UK street price of a kilo of heroin is, however, vastly inflated above what a kilo of heroin in Afghanistan is worth to the Taliban – the only ‘farm-gate’ price estimate I can find is £450*. But that seems low so lets be generous and put it at a nice round £1000; you are still looking at a Taliban heroin haul worth only £130,000 (and even if the Taliban sold it on the next link in the supply chain at some point in the future for ten times this, the figure only reaches £1,300,000). According to the Independent report the following were found: 5,000kg of ammonium chloride, 1,025 litres of acetic anhydride, 1,000kg of salt and 300kg of calcium hydroxide, which the MOD tells us is exactly enough chemicals to process a conveniently media friendly total of £50million pounds (UK street value) worth of heroin, but this would only be the case if there had been another 5-10 tons of opium seized, which there wasn't. The chemicals themselves are not especially hard to get hold of, or expensive (relative to the profits being made anyway), and processing opium into low grade morphine/heroin for transport is not especially difficult.

None the less, through the prism of MOD drug war propaganda and lazy journalism a story about £78,000 worth of opium has miraculously transmuted into a story about £50,000,000 worth of ‘deadly heroin’.

Defense secretary John Hutton plays this willful misunderstanding for all its worth, quoted extensively (from the MOD report) saying that:

“The seizure of £50 million worth of narcotics will starve the Taliban of crucial funding preventing the proliferation of drugs and terror on the UK's streets.”

So lets be clear; Hutton claims '£50million worth of narcotics' was seized, a ‘fact’ which is demonstrably shown to be untrue by the very same report he is quoted in. Numerous media outlets in the UK and around the world then ran the story that '£50m of heroin' was seized (Daily Mail, Telegraph, BBC etc) – even though no heroin was seized and the 50million figure is pure fiction (one that goes some way beyond the tired old 'make the seizure sound as big as possible by quoting the street price’ trick). The MOD report even opens with the (slightly different) claim that they captured ‘drugs, chemicals and equipment with a UK street value of £50m’ – which is also multi-tiered nonsense.

Worse still, and even if you want to argue the toss over the street value figures, the Hutton quote appears to deliberately imply that the Taliban have somehow been deprived of £50million in funds by this action – when in fact the reality is probably nearer £130,000, and this is assuming that these were indeed establishments entirely in the control of, and serving the profits of the Taliban, which again we have to take on trust from the MOD, and assuming they had a way of establishing it as fact. The Taliban and network of opium farmers also have stockpiles of opium, estimated by the UNODC to run to several 1000's of tons, so it is unlikely this raid will have any serious impact on supply. Moreover, evidence clearly suggests (and indeed the UNODC have argued) that restricting supply serves to increase prices - so the the net impact on profits of sporadic interdiction successes will be even less - potentially even boosting the value of remaining stockpiles.

According to the UNODC’s most recent Afghanistan report the Taliban are making between $250 and $470 million (or £175 - £330 million) a year from the Afghan drug economy (both in taxing poppy farmers and direct involvement in production and export) based on production of between 7 and 8 thousand tons of opium. This rather puts some of the ministers’ grand claims into perspective; this mission prevented maybe £100k in Taliban profits, and destroyed just over one ton of opium (and 20 dead Taliban).

To achieve this triumphant success took 700 troops and veritable fleet of high tech armoury and helicopter gunships (“including RAF Chinooks, Royal Navy Sea Kings and Lynx, joined by US CH53 Sea Stallions”). It will all have doubtless been fantastically expensive, and whilst we are in no position to estimate exactly what the operation did cost (PQ anyone?) we can be sure it would have been many many millions.

This is nothing less than a classic example of war time propaganda – and the madness of the drug war requires more propaganda to support it than most. Reading the MOD report makes this all the more clear. The media were provided with action photos, and action video footage as well as an account that reads like a Boys own war story. The targets are variously described as ‘labs’, ‘drug factories’ and ‘processing plants’ discovered in a ‘chain of compounds’, all sounding rather more like a Bond-villain’s high-tech lair than the mud huts full of dirty plastic bags and rusty barrels we see in the video footage.

The standard issue 'kicking the door down' drug-bust action shot

It has been a quite brilliant propaganda coup for the MOD, with the media uncritically reporting their account, ludicrously inflated statistics and all (and still almost all of them getting even that completely wrong, including the broadsheets). Some of the reporting is extraordinary; The BBC even ran the ‘Raids seize £50m of Afghan heroin’ headline, despite in the body of its report noting that ‘Troops destroyed 1,295kg of wet opium, estimated to have a street value of more than £6m as heroin’.

The need for such propaganda is not surprising. The Afghan conflict is a disaster; despite many billions being spent by the UK, the country is falling apart. The Taliban are resurgent, there is no evidence that the attack on the drug economy is achieving anything positive in the UK or Afghanistan, and the UK soldier casualty list has grown to 145 (one more announced today), not to mention the US and Afghan casualties. The MOD obviously need stories of success like this more desperately than ever, to give the impression they are 'winning' even when the opposite is true. That the operation was 'brilliant', 'daring', 'brave' and 'skillful' is not the point - it does not mean that it wasn't also ultimately futile or even counterproductive. The last thing the Government wants is for people to be told the truth; not just that the Afghanistan drug war is a disaster, but that it is the Government’s complicity in global drug prohibition that gifts control of the completely unregulated opium market to the Taliban insurgents and War lords in the first instance. Half of the worlds opium production is entirely legal and regulated for the medical opiates market (a small proportion of which is prescribed to addicts as heroin) and this legal production is not funding any paramilitary groups, mafiosi, or terrorists. We do have a choice.

More surprising perhaps is that the media, even what we like to think of as the quality end of the market, were so happy to uncritically regurgitate it all. Questioning the Government's account of foreign wars in not a betrayal of our troops – quite the opposite. It is what the media should be doing, and we have been badly let down.

Update 19.02.09:

I have now spoken briefly to the MOD press office. They maintain that the UK street price calculations are based on the heroin being sold at 40% purity. The calculations above are based on the UK street price of a kilo of heroin being sold at £75K. This translates into £75 a gram which is around double the usual street price anyway - so this would not substantially alter the analysis. Even if we do double the UK street price valuation - this still only takes it to a range of £12-20million.

See also:

• Afghan opium and the Emperor's new clothes
  
  
• The opium war's front line: Afghanistan, Iran and Hampshire
  
  
• Drug War remembrance
  

*The £450 figure comes from this report: Matrix Knowledge Group (2007). The illicit drug trade in the United Kingdom. Home Office Online Report 20/07. London: Home Office. It is a bit confusing - it seems too high to be referring to opium (unless you go back to 2001-2003) but does define farm-gate price of 'heroin' as the price received by the farmer before any subsequent processing’ - any clarification of this or alternative data would be appreciated.

Afghan Opium and the Emperor’s New Clothes

Last week the UNODC launched its latest report on opium production in Afghanistan. Steve Rolles and I attended the presentation of the report at Chatham House by Antonio Maria Costa Executive Director UNODC and Bill Rammell, Minister of State Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

• UNODC's press release
  
  
• Rammell's comments
  
  
• Costa's comments

Their headline was the 20% reduction in opium cultivation which they welcomed (albeit cautiously) as evidence of new found success of their respective interventions in the region. Opium production, by the way is only down 6% (as yields per acre cultivated have risen).

The statistical annex on world drug prices and purity from the World Drug Report 2008, shows precisely how badly they are really doing - even by their own standards. It is now eight years after the Allied troops overthrew the Taleban and effectively took control of the country with one of the key aims being the eradication of the opium crop, and things really aren't going well given the billions thrown at the sprawling military-led anti-opium enterprise since 2001.



As they each informed the audience of the positive story coming out of Afghanistan, I was reminded of the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Explaining how opium production had declined in the north of the country, I began to feel like the boy in the fairytale who, not having any investment in admiring the Emperor’s new clothes, points out to the assembled crowd that he is in fact naked. The 'we're turning the corner' fantasy they present ignores the brutal realities of supply and demand economics: not only are they palpably not winning the war on opium in Afghanistan, but crop eradication, interdiction, and enforcement more generally are actually the prime cause of much of Afghanistan’s ‘drug problem’.

Prohibition is what makes an intrinsically low value commodity like opium more profitable than any other agricultural option for Afghanistan's mostly impoverished farmers. It is economic alchemy, whereby plants are transmuted into commodities worth literally more than their weight in gold. Even if supply side interdiction was more effective (and you try and eradicate 1500+ square kilometers of poppy fields scattered over an area the size of Western Europe, every year, forever) the effect would be be to push up the price, that in turn inevitably incentivises new entrants to the market, and new cultivation. It is an economist's dream; the completely unregulated interplay of supply and demand, and whilst the demand driven economic imperative exists (and there's no sign of significant change on that front) the best that can be achieved is temporary, marginal and localised supply side 'success'. The problem may move around a bit - but it doesn't go away.

An image of opium and wheat cultivation from the UNODC report

It is the war on drugs that makes Afghanistan’s more fundamental problems intractable; a point made very clearly by none other than Lord Adair Turner, head of the Financial Services Authority.

As you would expect, anyone who asked a challenging question, received a response, not a reply, with the ‘successes’ merely repeated. When I suggested to Rammell that a responsible government would expose the costs of the policy to a more thoroughgoing analysis (along the lines of the PM’s Strategy Unit Report 2003), he informed me that he did not agree with the critique (failing to say why) and, in time honoured sound bite fashion, that legalisation was a “counsel of despair”. When I interjected that I had not suggested legalisation and that I had merely called for them to include a scrutiny of the costs, he used the 101 Media Training line: “if you’ll let me finish…” with that studied pained look that media trainers the world over have taught to politicians to enable them to persist in not answering difficult questions. Steve similarly asked a question along the lines of the economic analysis above. Aren't supply interventions futile in the current context, especially given the long history of interdiction failure in the region and elsewhere? Again the answer was more of the same; repeating cherry picked successes, process achievements (that evidently have no bearing on 'outcomes'), and more 'turning the corner' type rhetoric. To quote Paul Flynn MP, we have now turned the corner so many times we have gone around the block several times - but not actually got anywhere.

Other stand out analysis from the presentation included:

• The fact that the report showed that production in the longstanding poppy growing area of Helmand, had actually increased slightly and that Afghan production still significantly exceeds demand.
  

• Costa admitted that insurgents (The Taleban) were stockpiling opium. His reasoning was that it must be insurgents, (because traffickers would not stockpile opium when the price was dropping). Why insurgents would wait until the price rose but traffickers would not, was not made clear…

At this point the economic analyst (something Costa has some claim to being, given his background) might look at the over-production of the last few years (global demand is only around 4000 tonnes Costa informed us, and we have no reason to doubt this estimate) and how it coincides with falling prices and conclude that stockpiling was a rational economic response for almost anyone in the Afghan supply chain. It is not only an insurance policy against poor harvests or any eradication and interdiction efforts they might fall foul of, but also, crucially, by restricting supply stockpiling will help boost the price again. Look at the graph below. This is exactly what happened in 2001. The Telaban banning production had nothing to do with religion. It was, in retrospect, a rather effective ploy to boost prices; they rose tenfold, and stockpiles from the bumper harvests of the two previous years meant that supply to the West was largely uninterrupted.


Again, this is raw economics writ large. Interdiction can only make the problem worse; even when it succeeds, it fails. Opium prices are still well above pre-2001 levels and the new report notably also estimated that the Taleban are now making $500 million a year from the trade.

• Part of the plan detailed at the presentation was to stop opium getting out of Afghanistan in order to keep prices low and thus dissuade production. As well as being similarly in denial of economic realities, this plan appears to ignore the fact that controls are all-but non existent on the lengthy border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, some of the worlds remotest and poorly policed territories. This is just next season's emperor's new clothes range.
  

• One final point made is worth flagging up. The switch in demand patterns from heroin to cocaine might be good for Afghanistan. Not only an extraordinary take on the balloon effect but also begging the question of how well this scenario works for Colombia.

The next time Rammell and Costa turn up for a double act to spin the latest 'successes' I expect more of the audience to point out the messengers' nakedness.

See also:

• The BBC's Mark Easton on the 'Missing Opium'
  
  
• Lord Malloch-Brown's comments on the report
  
  
• Costa being given a light grilling by Zaena Badawi on BBC's Hard Talk
  
  
• Exec Summary of the Report

• Medical use of Afghanistan's opium wont solve the problem
  

Images from the Afghan drug war

There is a powerful set of images by the brilliant photographer Aaron Huey taken the front line of the war on drugs; Afghanistan. It not only shows the the futile eradication efforts and the very real conflict the drug war involves - with victims on both sides - but also the emerging domestic opiate misuse issues that rarely enter the Western discourse. A small selection are copied below (click to see full size) but you can see the complete set as a slide show here (click on the 'Features 1' menu , then 'Afghanistan war on drugs') .







This is your drug war


all images copyright 2008 Aaron Huey

Mark Easton - The mystery of the missing opium

"It's a mystery that has got British law enforcement officials and others across the planet scratching their heads. Put bluntly, enough heroin to supply the world's demand for years has simply disappeared."

Mark Easton has an excellent blog on an issue that no one else appears to have even clocked. He's clearly got the bit between his teeth on failing drug policy. This is precisely the kind of piece that helps the policy climate change we have talked about before.

See also this piece in today's Indie: The Big Question: Why is opium production rising in Afghanistan, and can it be stopped?

From Mark Easton's blog:

Theory 1: A large and undocumented market has opened up in countries which don't want to admit the problem. Russia has long been in denial over the scale of its heroin problem and the same may be true in emerging drug markets like Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

Theory 2: Vast quantities of heroin and morphine are being stockpiled. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UNODC is convinced that is the only explanation. In a recent bulletin he issues an urgent order: 'Find the missing opium.' "As a priority, intelligence services need to examine who holds this surplus, where it may go, and for what purpose" he says. "We know little about these stockpiles of drugs, besides that they are not in the hands of farmers."

UK produces more opium than 24 of Afghanistan's 35 provinces

According to Dr. Liam Fox, Shadow Defence Secretary, in 2007 the UK was the 11th largest producer of opium poppy.

Fox, writing a blog on the CentreRight website says,

'... figures recently released by the Government show that when the United Kingdom is compared with the 34 provinces in Afghanistan the UK ranks an astonishing 11th place in the amount of opium poppy production in 2007.
Figures released by the U.S. State Department show that in 2007 the UK grew more opium poppy than Pakistan.'

Astonishing? Not really, in fact its a pretty daft comparison. The UK production is all legal and for the medical market whilst the Afghan is all illegal and all for non-medical use. Also Helmland alone produces more than half of the country's opium with over 100K hectares, then there's a pretty dramatic fall off with number 8 being only 3K hectares, and UK 2.7K hectares.

I have recently stumbled into one of these opium poppy fields across 'acres of rolling Hampshire fields' as referred to by the Daily Mail and Liam Fox.

I photographed this opium poppy field in Hampshire at the weekend

The Transform blog has previously discussed the hysteria that is occasionally whipped up by media reporting (the Mail's ridiculous coverage in particular) of these 100% legally grown Class A poppies here.

Fox finishes his blog with a reference to the Senlis Council's Poppy for Medicine proposal,

'Not only are we failing to eradicate it [opium poppy], we are growing it at home when we could be buying it from farmers in Afghanistan before it ends up on the black market. The Government tells us that they have to grow poppy in the UK as part of a strategic reserve. I find this ironic considering that the UK is supposed to have the strategic and tactical control of one of the biggest poppy producing places in the world: Helmand Province!'

What he fails to point out, as Steve has argued previously is that UK, NATO and Afghan forces in Helmand province (and elsewhere in Afghanistan) don't have the infrastructure, or security situation, to prevent leakage into the illegal market which is fueling the conflict and lack of security. Even if they could, demand for the illicit product would remain and economic forces would inevitably lead to cultivation elsewhere, either in Afghanistan (most likely by the same people), or elsewhere (the 'balloon' effect identified recently by the director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. )

Hampshire police (and other UK police forces in counties where poppies are grown) on the other hand have a better grip on 'security' than their counterparts in Afghanistan, as well as substantially less to worry about; there seems to be no problems with legally grown opium poppies being diverted into the illegal market in the UK. However, having found no fences to prevent me accessing the field (and what use would they be anyway), I can only conclude that those involved in the production of medical opiates rely on the fact that the general public has no idea what is growing across our purple and pleasant lands. Or, more likely, couldn't care less.

Either way it demonstrates that there is absolutely no need for Afghanistan to be growing any of the opiates consumed in the UK. This problem is one of our own making and an alternative path that doesn't involve any terrorists, wars or dead British soldiers is there for all to see. Here's the one line version for those who have not worked it out yet:

legal production for non-medical use.

The choice is ours, and I have the photos to prove it.

The opium war's front line: Afghanistan, Iran and Hampshire

There has been a series of opium stories in the last couple of days that highlight some of the big questions in drug policy that the media and politicians rarely if ever want to mention, let alone explore in a rational and intelligent way.

First up was a report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) about how much profit the Taleban (BBC) or Taliban (Daily Mail) are making from Afghan opium production. The figure given is a charmingly rounded and media friendly (although somewhat Dr Evil-esq) one hundred million dollars, which is, according to the UNODC, 10% of the total value of Afghan opium harvest valued at a similarly nice round $1 billion.

"one hundred million dollars"

This announcement follows a curious pattern in similar UNODC missives, apparently torn between wanting to let people know how bad the drug crisis has become, so as to justify their existence (and expanding budgets), and at the same time studiously avoiding the fact that it is the quite staggering failure of the international drug control infrastructure they have overseen for the past 47 years that has allowed such disastrously destructive illegal markets to emerge (indeed thrive). A similarly bizarre 'look how useless international drug control is; we are needed more than ever' announcement was made about increased cocaine production in the Andes this week.

Interestingly UNODC Director Antonio Costa is at pains to point out that the failure of the billions poured into counter-narcotics operations in Afghanistan is even worse than was previously thought, with the Taleban moving into processing the opium into heroin, so as to make more money for the various unpleasant military and terrorist activities, and also noting that last year’s production was so massive (and by implication drug control so hopeless) that there is as much as 4000 tonnes of opium (enough to supply the global illicit market for a year) stockpiled somewhere across Afghanistan. This is disheartening news for the British troops (of whom over a hundred have now died, many whilst involved in anti drug operations); even if our boys achieve the impossible and prevent 100% of the opium production this year, the flow of opium will be essentially uninterrupted, and the whole hopeless charade will begin again next season. The miserable futility and human cost of this whole shamelessly political exercise is laid bare for all to see. There will doubtless be more bad news dressed up in as success in tomorrow’s UN World Drug Report. Watch this space.

Next, to Iran where it was announced 2 days ago that Iranian customs and police had intercepted a record 900 tonnes of opium, just over a third of the 2500 tonnes estimated to be entering the country in 2007 from neighbouring Afghanistan. Indeed Iran does have, by global standards, an impressive record in percentage terms for national drug seizure rates. But, and it deserves a capital B, not only did 1400 tonnes not get seized, but seizure rates (assuming the total estimate figures are correct) fell from 46% in 2006 and the total that got through actually increased. Moreover, since Iran upped its game on the interdiction front, the traffickers have done the logical thing and, being highly flexible and non-stupid, redirected or opened up new routes for getting their opium/heroin from Afghanistan to Western markets, mostly to the North through the former Soviet Republics and Baltic states. Thus it ever was with highly profitable markets run by organised criminals with more interest in making money than respecting traditions and national boundaries. Interestingly this analysis is not lost on the UNODC, which, again rather confusingly, is happy to proclaim local supply control successes whilst simultaneously revealing the stunning failure of the bigger picture regards total drug production - (often in the same press release, with last week’s cocaine press release being a splendid example). Indeed UNODC director Costa, an economist by trade, has made it very clear in public statements and publications that he understands this analysis of the brutal realities of supply and demand economics within a completely unregulated and highly profitable illicit trade (see for example here and here). The Iranian success, needless to say, has had no more impact on heroin supplies in the West than the recent UNODC trumpeted Afghan mega cannabis bust/nuking had on cannabis supplies (note how the ever scientific Daily Mail claims in this report "that Officials believe the area - near to the Taliban stronghold of Quetta in Pakistan - was turning dried cannabis leaves into heroin." - Im no biochemist but I'm positive that's not feasible)

And so finally to the sun dappled meadows of rural Southern England which, we are informed in a classic Daily Mail non-scoop, are now "The opium fields of England", in which "heroin-producing poppies [are] grown to make NHS pain-relief drugs" (since 2002). Unfortunately, nowhere in the Mail coverage do we learn that one the 'NHS pain-relief drugs' made from said poppies is in fact heroin. More significantly perhaps, we also do not learn that some of this 100% legal heroin 'made from heroin-producing poppies' 'identical to the plant used to produce heroin' is then legally prescribed to around 400 long term UK based heroin addicts, in injectable form, as part of a maintenance/stabilisation/treatment program. Indeed fact fans will be interested to learn that Macfarlan Smith, mentioned in the Daily Mail piece, are the only company licensed to buy poppies to produce opiates in the UK (there's another story here about their monopoly abuse pricing policy that means UK heroin is six times as expensive as in Holland but that will have to wait for another time). Also farmers do not require a license to grow opium poppies but are apparently required to inform the Police about cultivation. The licensing of the cultivation of legal opium (which until last year's bumper Afghan harvest was actually more than 50% of total global opium production) in the UK and elsewhere (primarily Tasmania, India and Turkey, but also Spain and Norway), its transit around the world, and its processing into various opiate drugs, including heroin, is overseen by...the UNODC.

Class A drug production in a field near you

As an aside the Daily Mail is also not exactly correct when they claim that: "Extracting opium from the poppies and turning it into morphine – or heroin" is "complex and expensive". Making morphine and heroin is tricky, but extracting opium - which is itself a potentially potent and addictive substance, is simple enough, requiring only some basic scraping of opium gum from the scarred poppy heads or a simple boiling and reduction process. Opium poppy seeds can be bought in any garden center and growing them is not illegal (odd in some ways that many of the UK's opiate users haven’t latched onto this). You can actually buy opium poppy heads, from which opium can be easily extracted, from most craft shops, and I even saw them for sale in IKEA the other day. Yes, you probably have some Class A drugs nestling in that dried flower arrangement on your mantle piece and don’t even know it. If you get bored and are not averse to risk and law breaking, I'm reliably informed you need about 12 heads for a decent dose.

But back to the real issue here. The opium poppies growing in those fields all over Hampshire and the South East (you can actually see one from just outside Didcot Parkway station for frequent London to Bristol train travelers like me), whilst botanically identical in every way to those growing in the wilds of Helmland province, have some significant and one would have thought fairly obvious distinctions. They are not funding nasty military operations by oppressive
Islamic militants, extremists and terrorists; the profits from their production and supply are going to farmers and legitimate companies. The heroin they are used to produce is 100% legal, is prescribed by doctors and used relatively safely by their patients – whom as a result are not dying of overdoses, getting HIV or Hep C through needle sharing, getting nasty infections from contaminated street drugs and dirty needles, robbing you, me, or your granny in the street, burgling your house, or prostituting themselves to raise money to pay the inflated prices demanded by illicit markets run by violent gangsters and street dealers.

We can keep on trying to eradicate production, cross our fingers that it’ll work one day (20 years was the latest plucked-from-nowhere estimate from DFID and the World Bank) and that when it does opiate addiction will be a thing of the past.

Or, back in the real world, experience suggests we need to take a different, arguably more pragmatic approach and firstly expand the model that is already in place, is 100% legal and operational under domestic and international law, and unlike the desperate and demonstrably futile interdiction efforts the UNODC and UK Government continue to back (at terrible human cost), is based on an extensive evidence base to prove its effectiveness on key public health and criminal justice indicators. Quite simply; every dependent opiate user brought within the legal system will reduce the demand for Afghan opium and horrors associated with its production, supply and use.

Do not expect to read this last paragraph in tomorrow's UN World Drug Report

World Bank/DFID: eradication risks increasing Afghan instability

A new report, jointly produced by the World Bank and the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) stresses that a poppy eradication strategy in Afghanistan risks increasing support for anti-government forces. Published yesterday the report argues that;

"Eradication (destruction of poppy while it is growing in the fields) is a blunt instrument that must be used cautiously and judiciously, and aerial spraying – which is currently being advocated in some quarters – would be counterproductive as it would further alienate the rural population, increase the gap between Afghans and their government, likely stimulate popular support for anti-government interests, and further worsen insecurity…. If adequate means of livelihood are not available, eradication will undermine the goals of state building and development."

This emphasis on boosting economic development as a long term strategy to reduce the damaging dependence on opium production is in contrast to US proposals to carry out widespread aerial spraying of poppies. William Byrd, a World Bank economist and one of the report’s authors told a press conference: "International experience suggests [spraying is] not sustainable, either politically or economically."

The Afghan Government and the UK, which runs the international counter-narcotics strategy in the country, have long argued against using aerial eradication, a policy that the US has championed in South America (for coca production) despite its striking failure to reduce overall production.

The World Bank/DFID report highlights the need for a proper development strategy in order to convince farmers not to grow poppies and emphasises the close links between not only opium production and security, but also eradication policies and support for (or not) the NATO project in Afghanistan. The report also emphasises that attempts to rid Afghanistan of opium production is a long term approach that will take ‘one to two decades’ to achieve rather than a quick-fix solution. It is argued that the need is for long-term commitment rather than short-term expediency, with truly effective counter-narcotics efforts being a combination of economic development, the provision of services and infrastructure, and better governance and the rule of law. Reinforcing the development effort right away is essential, but to achieve results will take considerable time, massive and sustained financial commitment, and political vision and stamina.

However, the development solutions presented by the World Bank / DFID report, whilst appealing relative to certain US sponsored military/eradication alternatives, and arguably offering localised solutions for certain communities in Afghanistan, cannot address the demand for illicit opiates, the production of which - even if the World bank / DFID proposals were successful - would simply displaced to other regions. Such is the reality of unregulated illicit markets which offer such spectacular potential profits.

This is of course one side of this issue with which the report fails to engage; the stark reality that Afghanistan's opium production is entirely the product of international drug prohibition. If legal opium production for medical use - which already accounts for 50% of world opium production - were expanded to supply legal opiates for non-medical use then the demand for Afghanistan's opium harvest woud dwindle and disappear. The one solution that would truly address the issue illicit Afghan production remains taboo.

At this point in the global political discourse substantially developing this option is clearly not practical, but there are some small signs of progress with legal heroin prescribing in a number of European countries, Canada and Australia, (as well as more surprising policy initiatives such as opium prescribing in Iran). These policies do however, whilst only a drop in the ocean at present, demonstrate that legally regulated production and supply of opiates can potentially reduce demand for illicit supplies and the problems such demand creates in producer countries. The key point is that there already exists working models for the legal production, supply and use of opium and heroin in a non-medical context (or rather quasi-medical - at this point we are only talking about maintenance/ substitute prescribing) .

The development solutions presented by the World Bank / DFID report, whilst appealing relative to certain US sponsored military/eradication alternatives, and arguably offering localised solutions for certain communities in Afghanistan cannot address the demand for illicit opiates, the production of which - even if the World bank / DFID proposals were successful - would simply displaced to other regions.

see also:

Medical use of Afghanistan's opium wont solve the problem Transform writing in the Guardian