Alberta farmers should be allowed to grow opium poppies as a cash crop to be used in the production of painkillers, says a market development and research firm.

Glen Metzler, head of Metzler Trading Company Ltd. in Lethbridge, said he has written to the provincial and federal agriculture ministers to ask that they allow opium poppy production in Canada for pharmaceutical use.

Metzler has also asked Health Canada for a special permit to start field trials in the Lethbridge area. He said opium poppies grown for commercial purposes could be lucrative for Alberta farmers, who could turn to Australia as a model.

"Australia's been growing poppies for 40 years now and very successfully," he said. "They've had up to 22,000 hectares into production. For their farmers, it does exceptionally well."

The idea for opium poppy cultivation in Canada came from Peter Facchini, a University of Calgary biological sciences professor, who runs one of two poppy labs in the world. Facchini said Alberta's climate is ideal for the growing of opium poppies.

"We certainly have varieties of opium poppy that could be cultivated in Canada right now and that could provide a new source of extensive revenue as a cash crop to farmers in Western Canada," he said.

Facchini said he knows opium poppies are associated with the production of heroin and are connected to the illicit drug trade, but he said they can produce codeine and other painkillers.

Demystifying the poppy

Facchini spends a lot of time inside a noisy chamber that looks like a giant refrigerator. Inside the light- and temperature-controlled room, he grows opium poppies.

"They don't seem all that threatening. They look quite impressive in their full-size mature state," he said.

Facchini said he has been on a quest to demystify the opium poppy and give it new life in Alberta.

Canada is the world's no. 1 consumer of codeine, importing an estimated $100 million worth of opium-related painkillers every year, Facchini said.

It makes sense for Alberta farmers to consider growing opium poppies, he said.

"Farmers benefit because they could cultivate the opium poppy as a cash crop to supplement their production of commodities like wheat and barley, for example," he said.

"You could also build the processing plant nearby. This is what has been done in Tasmania in Australia, where the raw plant material would be transported to a nearby pharmaceutical processing plant and turned into pharmaceutical products."

Facchini said the industry could inject $100 million a year into the Canadian economy.