Depiction of opium smokers in an "opium den" in the East End of London, 1874.Harvesting opium.Opium crop from the Malwa region of India
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Opium

Opium is a narcotic analgesic drug which is obtained from the unripe seed pods of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L. or the synonym paeoniflorum). more...

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Harvesting opium

To harvest opium, the skin of the ripening pods is scored by a sharp blade. The slashes exude a white, milky latex, which dries to a sticky brown resin that is scraped off the pods as raw opium.

Opium has powerful narcotic properties. Its constituents and derivatives are used as painkillers in extreme circumstances, such as in terminal stages of cancer. Therefore, a small amount of legal production is discretely conducted under strict supervision by law enforcement. The leading legal producers of opium are France and Australia. The French company Francopia produces 20% to 25% of the world's total, with total sales of approximately 60 million € (1 Euro (EUR) = 1.2085 Dollar (USD)).

Opium preparation

Raw opium must be processed and refined (called "cooking") before it is suitable for smoking. The raw opium is first dissolved in water and simmered over a low heat. The brown solution is then filtered to remove the insoluble vegetable waxes and then evaporated over a low heat. The result is a smokable form of opium with a considerably higher morphine content percentage-wise than the raw latex. This is then pressed into bricks and either transported to heroin laboratories or used as is.

Although opium is used in the form of paregoric to treat diarrhea, most opium imported into the United States is broken down into its alkaloid constituents. These alkaloids are divided into two distinct chemical classes, phenanthrenes and isoquinolines. The principal phenanthrenes are morphine, codeine, and thebaine, while the isoquinolines have no significant central nervous system effects and are not regulated under the Controlled Substances Act. Opium is also processed into heroin, and most current drug use occurs with processed derivatives rather than with raw opium.

Seed Capsules

The seed capsules also contain morphine, codeine, and other alkaloids. These pods can be boiled in water to produce a bitter tea that induces a long-lasting intoxication. Addiction to poppy tea is rare, but does occur.

Chemical properties and physiological effects

Opium resin contains two groups of alkaloids: phenanthrenes (including morphine and codeine) and benzylisoquinolines (including papaverine). Morphine is by far the most prevalent and important alkaloid in opium, consisting of 10%-16% of the total. It binds to and activates μ-opioid receptors in the brain, spinal cord, stomach and intestine. Regular use, even for a few days, invariably leads to physical tolerance and dependence. Various degrees of psychological addiction can occur, though this is relatively rare when opioids are used for treatment of pain, rather than for euphoric effects. These mechanisms result from changes in nervous system receptors in response to the drug. In response to the drug, the brain creates new receptors for opiates. These receptors are "pseudo" receptors and do not work. When the opiates are out of the body, the brain has more receptors than before the use of the drug, but only the same amount of endogenous opiate (endorphins) to fill these receptors.

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Countryside suffers opium withdrawal: hill peoples are the casualties of the war on drugs
From New Internationalist, 11/1/04 by Tom Fawthrop

The Laotian Government's headlong rush towards their 2005 UN deadline for total opium eradication has been hailed by international drug control agencies as a remarkable success. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in July that the achievement in Laos, together with a parallel decline in opium cultivation in Burma, could potentially lead to the end of more than a century of opium production in the so-called Golden Triangle region if it can be sustained.

But there is mounting evidence of the drug war's forgotten casualties. More and more Hmong and Akha hill people are dying--not because of any insurgency or displacement caused by a war--but rather because of an overzealous implementation of the global anti-narcotics campaign.

With few alternative income-streams in place, development specialists have warned of a looming humanitarian disaster for those who have been cajoled and coerced into abandoning their traditional opium livelihoods. More than 30,000 have been uprooted from their traditional homes and mountain habitats and resettled in the valleys. Crop substitution and aid is available to only a few areas.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

A number of Laos-based development specialists argue that the UN agency should have checked first about the number of alternative crop projects in place, before urging the Government to destroy the hill peoples' only livelihood. According to one NGO survey of resettlement areas, all age-groups are dying of malaria and dysentery. Poor sanitation and lack of medicine have led to soaring mortality rates; at four per cent, twice that of hill farmers in their former mountain habitat and almost four times the national average. A separate UN report observes that resettled hill people 'not only lack sufficient rice, but face fresh diseases--malaria, gastro-intestinal problems and parasites,' which are seldom experienced in the mountains.

It was not always so. Until the late 1990s the Laotian Government, mindful that more than 40 per cent of its population was made up of hill peoples and that opium was an important cash crop and medicine, displayed a sensible reluctance to ban opium poppy cultivation until the international community could guarantee alternative crops and livelihoods were in place. However, in 1998 both UNODC and the US Drug Enforcement Administration succeeded in pushing UN member states to accept deadlines for ridding the world of the narcotics supply. Laos was pressured to fall into line and drop all its caveats--with clearly disastrous results.

Meanwhile, some opium-growing nations are exempt from narcotics repression. Australia, France, India, Spain and Turkey are all members of a licit opium-growing club of nations based on pharmaceutical demand for opium derivatives in the manufacture of pain-killing drugs. A number of Lao government officials query why their poor poppy farmers cannot be offered the same deal as that of Tasmanian farmers, where opium worth more than $49 million annually is legally harvested for pharmaceutical purposes.

Given that Laos' contribution to the international heroin market is marginal, and narcotics agencies accept that around 40 per cent is consumed domestically, what is left of current opium production could readily be absorbed by the pharmaceutical demand.

But given the strong mindset of those waging the global war on drugs against legalization, even for medicinal purposes, this alternative approach faces real obstacles.

COPYRIGHT 2004 New Internationalist Magazine
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

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