Recently, I posted a blog expressing concern about newspaper reports that this year’s poppy crop in Afghanistan promised to be of record proportions. My concern arose from that country being the source of virtually all of the world’s entire supply of heroin, and from how active in its illicit sale were those here with connections to that part of the world.
It turns out that I am not alone in harbouring such concerns.
Towards the end of last December, I discovered yesterday, Andrew Selous, Conservative MP for South West Beds,gave a speech in the House of Commons suggesting that the government should ‘buy up the Afghan heroin crop and use it around the world for pain relief'.
'That would stop it flooding into this country illegally’, he remarked before adding:
‘Given that we know that 90% of the heroin on UK streets comes from Afghanistan and that we have a major military presence there, it is extraordinary that we cannot do more to stop the poppy crop ending up here.’
Well, blow me! Two year before Mr Selous made his suggestion, I had pretty much suggested exactly the same thing. I did so in a blog I posted on the Civitas website just before it closed for the Christmas break, and more in jest and as a way of entering into the spirit of the festive season, than as a serious contribution to social policy.
Talk about life imitating, if not exacty art, then at least the light 'arted!
This is what I wrote in that posting which was entitled: 'The Government's Fix and How to Fix it'.
Due to the recent enforced closure of the Merseyside-based firm that supplied the NHS with flu-vaccine and diamorphine, it is reported in today’s papers that the country’s hospitals face the prospect of running out of supplies of the painkiller in a mere matter of weeks.
This is no laughing matter, since diamorphine is used in the analgesic treatment of cancer patients and others with serious and terminal painful conditions.
The Department of Health seems not overly concerned. It is reported as having spoken of switching to the use of alternative painkillers like morphine.
Clearly, however, since diamorphine was its previous drug of choice, the prospect of its not being available for hospital use cannot but be very serious.
In not having anticipated this crisis and formulated contingency plans to deal with it, the government displays a staggering degree of complacency and incompetence -- unless its recent legalisation of living-wills is its contingency plan!
Since the government seems incapable of organising the medical equivalent of a seasonal celebration in a brewery, I would like to end the year on a note of seasonal good-will by making the following suggestion, while recognising the problem in question is no laughing matter, but one of appalling suffering shortly to occur as a result of its incompetence.
‘Diamporhine’, as is well-known, is the medical name for heroin. Now, the newspapers are constantly telling us the streets of England’s cities and villages are awash with the substance, as they are with practically every other drug known to man or beast.
Until the government can find a more reputable alternative source of supply, why doesn’t it announce a moratorium for those who possess quantities intended for illegal sale and offer to buy up the entire stock at some agreed above street-level price?
That way, those in genuine need of the drug could gain it, and those who are not in genuine need could be spared being made to acquire such need of it.
Admittedly, this would be only a temporary fix. But, then, as every junkie will testify, that is all that those in quest of the drug are ever after.
Wishing you a happier 2005 than 2004, but doubting whether for all too many it will be!