Photo: Torsten Karock/Getty Images

It's an unfortunate fact that people living in poverty do not have access to pain medicine adequate for their condition.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, “the Senlis Council, a drug-policy research group with offices in London, Brussels and Kabul… argues that the United States and Britain waste more than $800 million a year, as well as soldiers’ lives, trying futilely to eradicate poppies”. Poppies are the raw material for morphine, a opioid medication used to treat moderate to severe pain of all kinds, including back pain. Opioids are highly addictive.

The Times article sheds light on, among other things, the way in which the United States participates in licensed poppy flower growing in Turkey and India, and it probes the possibility of adding Afganistan’s massive gardens to the mix. Afganistan, while one of the world’s poorest countries, is, perhaps, the largest grower of poppies, at 93%, according to the article.

As with any proposal, this one has its critics. Some of the reasons why it won’t work, they say, are because the poppy fields in Afganistan are just too large, and perhaps even more impactful, the illegal drug industry will pay the poppy farmer significantly more than will the legal one.

Read the article. What do you think?

| Back Pain Medications | Opioids or Cox-2s? | Cox-2s and Heart Problems | Risk for Addiction with Opioid Pain Medication Played Down by Purdue Pharma Marketing Efforts |