Use poppies for painkillers, U.S. rep urges

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
WASHINGTON -- After a year of escalating Afghan heroin production, calls are mounting for a shift in U.S. policy aimed at turning Afghanistan's poppy into an economic asset by using it to produce medicinal painkillers.
Backers of the proposal include leading scientists and economists, as well as some in Congress. The Bush administration is skeptical.
Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo., plans to use his recently acquired seat on the House International Relations Committee to bring the matter up when lawmakers convene next month.
"You can't just cut off the poppies because that's the livelihood of the people who live there," Carnahan said Thursday. "But providing them with alternative legal markets for pain-relief medication is a way to help cut back on that heroin supply."
Testimony as evidence
Carnahan hopes to drive these points home by using testimony from law-enforcement officers, drug abuse experts and scientists from St. Louis, where officials say an influx of Afghan heroin is causing problems.
"We need to have a better way of dealing with the problem, since it's proving to be so deadly here in St. Louis and in the Midwest," he said.
In backing the idea, Carnahan and others cite its success elsewhere.
Thirty years ago, U.S. officials fashioned a treaty that turned a looming narcotics threat in Turkey and India into a part of their legitimate economies using poppies to make legal medication. Those nations export raw opiates from which painkillers are produced by companies such as Mallinkcrodt of St. Louis.
Australia has a thriving trade from altered, morphine-free poppies that cannot be easily used to produce heroin.
The painkillers derived from a compound it produces, called thebaine, are potent and in demand throughout much of the world.