Opium

by Martin Booth

  Perhaps it is society which is looking at drugs in the wrong way. Brian Inglis wrote in his 1974 book, The Forbidden Game: A Social History of Drugs:

  To punish drug takers is like a drunk striking the bleary face it sees in the mirror. Drugs will not be brought under control until society itself changes, enabling men to use them as primitive man did: welcoming the visions they provided not as fantasies, but as intimations of a different, and important, level of reality.

  It should also be remembered it is not the drugs themselves but how they are used which is the important point. As Frank Zappa, the rock musician, put it: ‘A drug is neither moral nor immoral – it’s a chemical compound. The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats it as if consumption bestowed a temporary licence to act like an asshole.’

  Some believe there is another antiphon. Their response is legalisation, distribution control and taxation. Treat heroin like alcohol: use decriminalisation to bring down the price, distribution control to standardise quality and tax revenue to combat the problem. It is a handsome dream but impractical. One only has to see under-age British children buying cigarettes in corner stores and watch cross-Channel shoppers bringing in over-limit supplies of wine and beer from French supermarkets, or observe American youngsters dodging the under-21 restrictions in a liquor store, to know the concept is flawed.

  Where legalisation experiments have been tried, problems have arisen. Amsterdam is an object lesson. All drugs are illegal in the Netherlands, but the sale of certain amounts of soft drugs is tolerated. Over 450 coffee shops in Amsterdam (with others throughout the country) may openly sell cannabis, the idea being to separate soft drug users from contact with the criminal pushers of harder drugs. It is a failure. Amsterdam continues to have a serious and escalating heroin and organised crime problem whilst the Netherlands now has a registered addict population equal to Britain’s but in a population a fifth the size. This is hardly surprising for statistics throughout the Western world would show most addicts start on soft drugs and graduate to worse. Another unfortunate result of this has been the development in the Netherlands of a new travel industry, narco-tourism, whereby tourists visit a country specifically to obtain drugs which are more readily available than they are at home. Narco-tourism is also increasing elsewhere – for example in Thailand and Vietnam, especially in Cholon, Ho Chi Minh City’s Chinatown – and is expected to increase as tourism develops in Third World countries.

  New initiatives are being suggested. In 1994, the association of British chief constables, admitting they were losing the war on heroin, demanded a radical government policy change. It was suggested registered addicts receive heroin and other required drugs free on the National Health Service, a royal commission be set up on drug control and a DEA-type national task force be implemented.

  At the same time General Raymond Kendall, the head of Interpol, suggested drug use (but not trafficking) should be decriminalised with governments addressing themselves to the reduction of consumption. This may work: if demand on the streets of the West falls off, the trade will wither on the vine. Or, in this case, in the pod. The result of such suggestions is leading to increased redirection of resources towards educating the public as a whole against the physical, social and criminal dangers of drug taking. In the long term, this strategy may work, the culture of drug taking being undermined. Modern anti-drugs information and education campaigns, eschewing a patronising tone, avoid censuring drugs and instead suggest an awareness of what the would-be drug taker is embarking upon: facts not finger-wagging admonishments are considered a more effective deterrent. School-based schemes, such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), which was begun in America but is being tried in other countries, concentrate on social skills such as how to resist peer group pressure.

  There have to be short-term strategies as well. The best is to deprive narco-criminals of their narco-money. Others may include the removal of legal obstacles built into the constitutions of many democratic countries, depriving traffickers not only of their incomes but also their rights. Needless to say, civil liberties groups will complain bitterly but the response to such complaint is to ask for an alternative. All that can be hoped for is a modest improvement in the situation in the medium term. There will be no quick victories in the drugs wars.

  The problems also extend beyond the confines of the legal or medical worlds. As has been shown, drugs are well and truly set on the political scene – and political expediency wins more often than enforcement officers. For example, in 1991 the CIA was reported to have warned President Bush the Syrian government was directly involved at every level in opium and hashish production in the Bekaa Valley: the amount earned was said to be nearly $1 billion per annum, or approximately 20 per cent of Syria’s GNP. Bush chose to ignore this information in order to retain Syrian support during the Gulf War. This is just one instance of politics dominating overall national and international drug policies.

  The only way to stamp out heroin is to eradicate all poppy growing – or would it? Synthetic opiates could one day take heroin’s place: codeine has been manufactured artificially although it is not yet commercially viable. An added side to this argument comes from licit poppy growing nations and their pharmaceutical companies: they are quick to point out if all poppies are wiped out and only synthetics are created, this will give a huge protectionist boost to the American pharmaceutical industry which has held the patents for most of the synthetic drugs capable of replacing morphine and codeine registered in the last 25 years.

  The development of certain types of poppy may help the situation. Modern commercial production of morphine from poppy straw uses a variation of Papaver somniferum with a high oil content but the morphine content of which can only be economically extracted by industrial processing. Another poppy, Papaver bracteatum, has been found to be a viable and rich source of thebaine, with up to 26 per cent of the dried latex consisting of this alkaloid: it may be converted into codeine and is the origin of ‘Bentley Compounds’ which form the basis for the manufacture of a range of powerful analgesics. Perhaps future commercial production could use this poppy for, being low on other alkaloids, P. bracteatum is unlikely to be of value to heroin producers.

  Whilst research into alternative alkaloid sources grows apace, others are looking into the mechanisms of pain relief and opiate dependence. One recent study into the way the brain works in addiction suggest addictive behaviour is actually quite normal and only becomes problematical when it gets out of hand. The theory revolves around the supposition that humans have evolved a psychological and/or physiological reward system which makes us get hooked on whatever we need to survive. An addict’s yearning for his drug, it is argued, is basically similar to the chocaholic’s desire for Cadbury or Hershey bars.

  Additional work at the cutting edge of pharmacological research, looking into the way the human brain functions, has discovered a system of substrates which are in effect naturally occurring opiate neurotransmitters produced by the brain itself. As chemical messengers, they carry signals between cells, are found to be the primary targets of opium and heroin and, it is suggested by some, may yet prove to be one of the mechanisms of memory. Ongoing psychopharmacological study is hoped to substantiate and explain the link between addiction and the chemical systems operating the brain.

  A study by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm has found that the greater the dose of opium-based painkillers absorbed by the placenta during childbirth, the greater the risk of the infant becoming an addict in later years. This is called imprinting – a specific physiological memory created during the highly sensitive period immediately after birth which can affect behaviour in adulthood. This might be why some people are more easily trapped into dependence when trying drugs under peer pressure. It may be we must reconsider the use of opiates as painkillers in childbirth.

  Professor Edythe London, of the National Institute of Drug Abuse in Baltimore, is studying brain scans to see what happ
ens when drugs are present in the bloodstream. She has discovered all drugs of abuse act in the same way, reducing the use of glucose over the cortex. Exploring trigger mechanisms for drug craving, she has also found increased activity in the region of the brain concerned with memory: even when detoxified, an addict’s brain responds to memories associated with the former habituation. This research may lead to a new means of treating addiction, hopefully with some degree of permanence. Such a treatment could be a major step forward when one considers the impermanence of existing treatments from which only a minority attain lasting abstinence. It may even do away with the fear of withdrawal.

  Alongside new pharmaceutical and pure medical research comes innovative applied studies. One such is a detoxification technique developed by a psychologist, Dr Juan Legarda, in Seville. He believes addicts should not and need not suffer during withdrawal, achieving this by accelerating the period of withdrawal by using powerful drugs whilst the addict is anaesthetised. His patients are sedated for about 8 hours during which time they are dosed with powerful opiate antagonists: these are chemicals which, in simple terms, locate themselves in receptors in the brain where they expel opiates. After treatment, the patient maintains a small daily dose of antagonists for six months: Dr Legarda claims a 70 per cent continued abstinence after six months. Although his technique is viewed with some scepticism in medical circles, where the risks of anaesthesia during detoxification are considered too high, some clinics are assessing the methodology of Dr Legarda’s approach to see if they might adopt at least certain aspects of his treatment.

  Drs Christopher Lowe, Neil Bruce and their team at the Institute of Biotechnology at Cambridge University have made a discovery of considerable potential assistance to law enforcement agents searching for heroin. They have found a bacterium, Pseudomonas putida M10, isolated from samples of industrial waste liquors collected from a pharmaceutical factory dealing in opiates, which exclusively utilises morphine as its carbon and energy source – in other words, morphine is its only food source. Possessing unique enzymes, the bacterium breaks down morphine and can at the same time affect certain dyes causing them to change colour. This property forms the basis for a very sensitive and immediate detector of the presence of heroin in minuscule quantities. It could be applied to ‘sniff’ for heroin much as explosives detectors recognise the presence of plastic explosives. If it was to prove successful, it could revolutionise the drive against the smuggler for postal packages, airline baggage and even vehicles could be quickly and effectively monitored.

  A spin-off from the Lowe/Bruce research also contains considerable medical potential. Drugs synthesised from morphine, codeine and thebaine are complicated and expensive to make. They also generate highly toxic waste which has to be treated. The Cambridge team has discovered that when Pseudomonas putida M10 feeds on morphine, hydromorphone naturally forms. This substance is one of the most powerful painkillers used today. It is six times more potent than morphine and less addictive but it is very costly to produce. If it can be made from a biotechnological process, the cost will be greatly reduced and it will therefore be more readily available. Quite possibly, there are other micro-organisms yet to be discovered which might also serve to provide bio-synthetically produced pharmaceutical products.

  Traffickers can also be originative and they are always coming up with inventive ideas. One recent innovation, concerning cocaine trafficking, has yet to be used with heroin but illustrates their success. DEA agents call it ‘The $1,000,000 Bathtub’. Cocaine in powder form is mixed into plastic and fibreglass resin which is then shaped into commercial goods such as bathtubs. These are then imported into the target country where the resin is chemically broken down and the cocaine relatively easily recovered. The resin is odourless and there is no way an enforcement agent can deduce the presence of the drug without chemically testing each fibreglass item. The DEA estimate tons of cocaine are currently being smuggled by this method.

  Traffickers are also quickly benefiting from advances in technology. In recent years, the proliferation of mobile telephones has played into traffickers’ hands by giving them versatile and often untraceable communication. Would-be clients can ring a mobile unit, positioned in empty premises, which is switched to call forwarding: the police may track down the location of the ’phone but not the destination of incoming calls. Stolen telephones can be cloned with a more recent development, masterminded by the Triads, leading to new generation ‘smart’ ’phone chips being manufactured illegally. This allows for a mobile unit (called a magic ’phone by the law enforcement agencies) to pluck a subscriber number out of the air, use it, discard it and randomly choose another. Unknowing and innocent ’phone owners foot the bill.

  Recent cryptographical inventions enable information to be encrypted and sent via e-mail or bulletin boards through the Internet or World-Wide Web. Being encrypted, it can only be read by those for whom it is intended. This provides a fast, global means of secret communication which is a definitive boon to drug dealers as well as anyone else who wishes to conceal their activities from official agencies. In the face of such developments, the time may not be far off when secret service agents do not seek to decipher an enemy’s military signals but those of international criminals and terrorists whom they chase not only in fast cars but also by surfing the Internet.

  The estimated world annual turnover of the drugs trade is up to $750 billion, a far larger sum than is used by all the terrorist movements on earth put together, not to mention being infinitely greater than the budgets of all the enforcement agencies. Such vast sums of money not only give the drug barons enormous economic and political power but also finance a horrifying amount of crime all over the world.

  It may seem an exaggeration yet it is not: the growth and size of the narcotics trade, which ruins the lives of millions of addicts annually, has the potential to be the greatest threat of all to society. Heroin addiction, the legacy of opium which was probably the first medicinal substance used by man, is here to stay, taking its place alongside poverty, racism and war in the sorry catalogue of insoluble human problems.

  To every discovery mankind has ever made, from the lighting of the first fire to the splitting of the atom, there has been a good side and a bad side. Opium is no different. It can stop pain and, as Thomas Sydenham observed over 300 years ago, few doctors would be hard-hearted enough to practise medicine without it. Millions have been saved by it: yet it has also destroyed millions of lives, enslaved whole cultures and invidiously corrupted human society to its very core.

  Bibliography

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&nbs
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