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The painkilling fields: England's opium poppies that tackle the NHS morphine crisis
Last updated at 21:52pm on 14.07.07In Afghanistan, British troops are fighting a ferocious and often lethal war to eradicate the country's opium poppy crop.
Yet, as our soldiers risk their lives daily, large swathes of the English countryside are being turned over to the very same crop - with the full backing of the Government.
Farmers are cultivating the poppies to combat a critical shortage of morphine in NHS hospitals, and are finding it a lucrative crop.
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A growing business: An opium poppy field near Didcot power station in Oxfordshire
Should Britain be growing poppies for morphine? Have your say at Reader Comments below
Extracts from the plants can either be turned into the much-needed painkiller - or deadly heroin.
Most of the heroin that reaches Britain originates in the poppy fields of Afghanistan, and the trade funds Taliban-backed terrorism.
But in the UK, the Home Office has granted pharmaceutical company Macfarlan Smith a licence to harvest the poppies, and now they are being grown in tens of farms across Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire.
The move aims to ease the severe lack of diamorphine that has hit the NHS, and the rest of the world, for several years.
Guy Hildred has dedicated more than 100 acres of his farm near Ipsden, Oxfordshire, to poppies. He said: "It is worthwhile from a farmer's point of view and it's an expanding market."
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Lethal crop: An Afghan poppy farmer
His neighbour, Tom Allen, has a 15-acre poppy field and said: "We simply had to prepare the land, drill it and watch the crop grow. Macfarlan Smith takes care of the harvesting and transport of the poppy heads. I think we'll do it again next year."
A spokesman for Macfarlan Smith's parent company, Johnson Matthey, said: "We have a number of farmers under contract to grow poppies, which we then harvest. You can extract morphine and codeine from the poppies' capsules.
"We are the only company processing poppies in this way in the UK. The same crop is grown in Afghanistan, India and Turkey for illegitimate reasons."
The opiate from which both morphine and heroin are derived is found in the milky white sap contained in the poppy's capsules. It hardens into a sticky brown resin.
Despite the efforts of British troops, Afghanistan still generates 90 per cent of the world's heroin output.
Cultivation of the crop for legal means has expanded rapidly in Britain since trials began six years ago - but the global morphine shortage is so severe that Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch-Brown has raised the possibility of legalising opium growing in Afghanistan.
A Home Office spokeswoman said: "The poppies in question, Papaver somniferum, can be grown without a licence. The extraction of the drugs is a complex industrial process and the people who work to produce the drugs have to be licensed.
"In addition, the Home Office receives information about where the poppy farmers are and how much they are growing from the pharmaceutical companies. We then send growers a letter that they are encour-aged to show to local police to make them aware of their activities."
Reader views (2)
Here's a sample of the latest views published. You can click view all to read all views that readers have sent in.
It is just profiteering. Shameless and naked.
Macfarlan Smith used to buy from India and about 6 years ago it had protested when India had increased the price of its opium by 10% saying that it was becoming uneconomical for them to buy Indian poppy. Uneconomical! HA!
They were selling morphine at an immense profit to Latin America. That is the reason. Most of this will be sold aborad. In India 10 mg morphine costs just 25 US cents. Theirs sells for US $ 15!
That is why Afghanistan will never be allowed to legalise opium cultivation as Senlis has suggested. All the big US and UK pharma companies will lose. Reduced profits.
Sympathies of Ms Marilyn and people like her are wasted as its only those few companies who make the biggest profits run the governments in the US and UK. They do not bother how the children of the unprivileged classes get addicted. They only want them as cannon fodder.
Sad but true.
- Romesh Bhattacharji, New Delhi, India
Why cant this government do something for the country of Afghanistan and actually make the growing of the poppies that are grown there legitimate and use their poppies for the shortage of morphine. The government spouts on about helping to rebuild this nation but fails to help in a way that could be constructive to that nation bringing it out of poverty and hopefully stop the rising up again of the taliban.Thwarting the drug dealers, but no our economy has to take priority even when our soldiers are getting blown up and our kids are being fed the resulting heroin.
- Marilyn, halesowen UK
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