Photo: (C)n Burgos (flickr)

Opium is widely recognized as a major obstacle to economic development and postwar reconstruction in Afghanistan. It's estimated that Afghanistan currently produces between 90 and 95 percent of the world's opium. It's an approximately US$4 billion industry that accounts for just over half of the country's total GDP. And, according to Newsweek, most of that money goes to traffickers and corrupt officials. The average opium grower makes only US$300 a year.

What is to be done? The numbers indicate that the U.S.-led counter-narcotics program, which focuses primarily on poppy eradication, has been unsuccessful. Opium production has skyrocketed since the Taliban's overthrow; the UN reported a 34 percent rise from 2006 to 2007. Other programs that look to curb opium production by providing farmers with other crops or alternative livelihoods have also had limited success.

An international security-and-development policy group thinks there's an unexplored option. The Senlis Council is advocating a "Poppy for Medicine" program in which individual Afghan villages would be licensed to turn poppy into morphine, rather than heroin. In theory, this program would allow existing opium crops to be diverted into legal markets for medical painkillers.

In theory, this sounds workable. Similar projects have been successful in India, Thailand, and Turkey. But standing in the way of implementing the same program in Afghanistan are two probably insurmountable obstacles — one political and one economic.

The Afghan government opposes opium's legalization; the crop is banned by the country's constitution. Then there's a report from Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry, which says there simply isn't sufficient demand for opium for medical purposes. Afghanistan poppy growers would have to corner the market on medical opium — and then double it — to sell out their crop.