Anti-Drug Program Causes Medical Shortages

by Nadeem Iqba

From 800 tons in 1979, the country's annual opium poppy harvest has been slashed to just 10 tons, with legal curbs and aid from United Nations agencies.

But while Pakistan is hailed for pulling itself out of the ranks of nations feeding the clandestine international drug trade, the country may have cut off a ready supply of the narcotic for medicinal uses.

Ironically, there has been a sharp rise in drug abuse in the country, with large quantities of narcotics being smuggled in, critics point out.

Among them are top drug abuse control authorities in the country. According to senior army official Zafar Abbas who heads the Anti-Narcotics Force, it is "unfortunate" that Pakistan is no more a producer, but transit nation for narcotics.

Drug addiction is growing by seven percent annually in the country, he told IPS. "By the end of this year the population of drug addicts would reach 4.8 million, requiring almost the same amount of poppy Pakistan was producing in 1979," he points out.

Some medical experts are also worried that the near elimination of the opium poppy crop means non-availability of the narcotic for scientific and medicinal purposes. Leading cancer specialist Sher Mohammad Khan, is among those who want some poppy production to continue under official supervision.

According to Khan, drugs derived from the opium poppy, like pethodine, morphine and dihydromorphine are the most effective pain-killers.

Pakistan is a party to the 1961 Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

"The principal objective of all the UN (narcotics) conventions is to limit the use of narcotic drugs to legitimate medical and scientific purposes," says the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) in its 1999 report.

"(This) reflects the consensus among all Governments that...adequate provision must be made to ensure the availability of narcotics drugs for such purposes," notes the report.

This was also asserted by a special UN General Assembly session in 1998 to find ways of combating the international drug abuse menace.

"There shall be a balanced approach between demand reduction and supply reduction, each reinforcing the other, in an integrated approach to solving the drug problem," said a Political Declaration adopted by UN member states at that conference.

But some fear that legal poppy production, as in India and Australia, could bring back large-scale illegal poppy farming.

"I agree that the poppy seed is required for medical purposes and Pakistan now has to import not for medical purposes but also for the drug addicts. But still I am against legal production as, given the international demand, it would be misused as a cover for illicit cultivation," says Anti-Narcotics Force chief Abbas.

Pakistan's opium eradication campaign was launched two decades ago by then military ruler Ziaul Haq who enacted strict Islamic norms for public life.

Among other things, these banned the use of any intoxicant, including narcotics, as un-Islamic. Till 1974, Pakistan had met its legitimate need for opium through import or legal production. The Hudood law banned even legal production.

Poppy was traditionally grown in Pakistan in the tribal areas near Afghanistan, in a region that was once largely free of government control. However, poppy farming has now shifted over to Afghanistan which is now the world's top opium producer.

According to Bernard Frahi, UN International Drug Control Program's (UNDCP) representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, 75 percent of the world's opium production is in Afghanistan. More than three- fourths of this comes from the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Nangarhar that border Pakistan.

Critics say that while eradicating opium production, the government has failed to check the easy entry of drugs into the country which is a major reason for the growing drug abuse.

Pakistan is in the midst of an ambitious five-year drug abuse control plan that ends in the year 2003. However, critics say the $55 million project, funded by the UNDCP and Western governments, gives priority only to controlling drug supply to the international market.