The UN estimates nearly three million Afghans are involved in opium poppy cultivation. Their country provides 90 per cent of the world's illicit opium, mostly as heroin sent to Europe. A third of national income flows from the annual poppy crop, which is grown in all 28 of the country's provinces. (Daniel Cooney/Associated Press)

It's not likely to happen, but a proposal by two men in Alberta for Canada to start producing its own opium would add this country to a very short list of places where you can legally grow opium poppies.

All parts of that particular poppy plant, except the seeds, are illegal in Canada. People can get away with a flower or two in their gardens, but a field full of them would definitely be of interest to the Mounties.

Drawing opium from the immature seed pod of Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy, on an Afghan farm. Despite years of eradication programs and crop substitution campaigns, opium production is expanding in Afghanistan. Some are proposing allowing the country to grow opium poppies for the world's pharmaceutical market. (Stephen Thorne/Canadian Press)

A visit to highly secure farms in Australia, China, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, India, Japan, Slovakia, Spain, Macedonia, Turkey or Britain is the way to go if you want to see opium poppies, legal opium poppies, nodding in the summer breeze. Under international law, those are the only countries that produce opium for pharmaceutical use.

It's probably easier, if a lot less safe, to go to Afghanistan if the goal is a stroll through a poppy field. Nearly 90 per cent of the world's opium comes from Afghan growers and since the fall of the Taliban in October 2001, Afghan warlords and peasant farmers have turned to opium poppies in a big way.

The multinational effort to topple the fundamentalist Muslim militia in Kabul is largely to blame for Afghanistan cornering the opium market. In their last years in power, the Taliban had almost entirely eliminated poppy cultivation. Using violence and coercion, but without international assistance, the Taliban's "war on drugs" worked. Unlike say, the American version, which began in 1971 under Richard Nixon, and has had few real reductions in the production and consumption of illicit drugs.

Anti-drug campaigners and law enforcement officials are so concerned about the situation in Afghanistan that they're seriously considering a proposal by the French-based Senlis Council, a development think tank, to legalize opium poppy production in some Afghan provinces. The idea was tacitly supported by Britain and by the United States, who've seen their opium eradication measures in Afghanistan fail miserably.

Afghan anti-drug efforts include gathering opium poppies from fields, often using the army or armed police, and destroying them in huge bonfires. Despite these efforts, poppy cultivation is spreading in Afghanistan and opium yield per hectare is going up as farmers become more efficient. (Rodrigo Abd/Associated Press)

A note of caution

It took Afghanistan's own Narcotics Minister, Habibullah Qaderi, to sound a note of caution. At a conference in Kabul last year, he pointed out the obvious: "A lot of opium will still be refined into heroin for illicit markets in the West and elsewhere. We could not accept this."

Heroin, of course, is what it's all about for drug traffickers. The sticky opium gum that comes from boiling the poppy plant, or slashing its seed case and letting the sap coagulate, is an addictive narcotic. But it's rather mild and is widely used in poppy-growing cultures as a pain killer or anti-diarrhoeal. Distilling opium produces codeine and morphine, both powerful and potentially addictive analgesics.

Heroin is an even more concentrated opiate. It's the street drug of choice in Europe and its popularity with American addicts ebbs and flows over time. Though there are medical uses for heroin, the law treats it as a dangerous narcotic and punishes illegal possession and trafficking.

Top poppy growing nations

Illegal:	Estimated value of crop
Afghanistan	$3.3 billion
Myanmar	$260 million
Pakistan	$ 50 million
Mexico	$47.4 million
Legal
Australia	$178 million
France	$86.5 million
Turkey	$71 million
*India	$46 million
*Only legal producer or raw opium, others export whole poppies or refined morphine and codeine. Sources: United Nations, Senlis Council

But medical science likes morphine and codeine, a lot. The World Health Organization bemoans the fact that pain treatment in developing countries is hindered by the high cost of opium-based analgesics. Just seven countries, all of them rich industrial economies, consume 80 per cent of annual morphine and codeine production. The WHO says poor people have the right to relief from chronic pain just like everyone else.

A long history

Trafficking in illegal narcotics became a huge international business thanks to European imperialism. Starting in the 16th century, British ships took opium from India to China to trade for tea. Within a few centuries, China had 14 million addicts and imposed a strict ban on opium imports. The European powers, led by Britain, launched punitive military campaigns to overturn the ban, known as the Opium Wars.

By then, addiction had spread to the United Kingdom and beyond. There was opium consumed at Queen Victoria's court, although it's not known if the monarch herself indulged. It became the drug of choice for many writers. Samuel Taylor Colderidge's poem, Kubla Khan, was written while the author was high on opium, and Thomas DeQuincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater rather speaks for itself. In America's rough and ready immigrant neighbourhoods of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, opium dens were a common sight.

It was around that time that U.S. lawmakers started banning recreational drugs like opium, and later heroin. The social and physical ravages of addiction became widely known through newspapers, and later, the mass media. Yet a century on, most realistic assessments of anti-drug laws rate them as no more successful in fighting the scourge of addiction than Prohibition, when Americans actually drank more alcohol between 1920 and 1933 than they did before the demon drink was banned.

No one expects Canada to throw its lot in with those other countries that grow legal opium poppies. For one thing, Uncle Sam might object. Vague commitments by the former Paul Martin government to slightly decriminalize marijuana were vigorously opposed south of the border. Alberta's economy may just have to limp along on oil and gas for a while yet.