Campaign launched to use Afghan opium to make painkillers

[babylonsister]

But who would have the honors of taking the crops away from the growers?

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/18/europe/EU_GEN_Italy_Afghanistan_Opium.php

Italian Red Cross, think-tank launch campaign for use of Afghan opium to make painkillers
The Associated Press

Published: September 18, 2006
ROME The Italian Red Cross and other organizations launched a campaign Monday to promote the idea of licensing Afghanistan's illegal opium production to make morphine.

"This system we advocate provides for one part of the Afghan opium to be used to make legal morphine, rather than illegal heroin," Massimo Barra, president of the Italian Red Cross told reporters in Rome.

The campaign seeks to promote trade agreements with Afghanistan and stems from a study released last year by The Senlis Council — a European think-tank on drug policy — that examined the potential for licensing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan to provide legal, opium-based painkillers.

The transforming of illegal poppy fields into legal ones would "reduce the importance of illegal practices in Afghanistan and would address the pain crisis in developing countries," where opium-based painkillers are needed to treat patients with cancer, AIDS and other diseases, Barra said.

The Afghan Red Crescent also is pushing the effort.

more...

[meegbear]

1. What an excellent idea ...

which means the administration will be completely against it.

[Drum]

2. That won't fly

unless the major US pharma companies control 9/10s of it. Remember the the litmus tests W threw in the world's face, re: Iraq reconstruction?

If US drug Cos. were in front of this, they'd probably have military cargo planes shipping it here.

And "soma" would soon be coursing through American voters' bloodstreams....