THE SOLUTION TO AFGHANISTAN'S OPIUM?

Earlier this year the head of the United Nations drugs control agency
said efforts to tackle Afghanistan's growing drugs trade were failing.
The UK-based development agency Spirit Aid offers a radical solution
to the problem.

During the 1990s, five or six provinces in Afghanistan were
cultivating opium poppy.

Since the fall of the Taleban, that number has increased to 28 out of
32 regions. That is a major factor in worsening violence this year as
people struggle to survive and fight for control of this illegal,
socially damaging but lucrative resource.

Afghan farmers produce opium that is sold for some $2.3bn, according
to United Nations estimates.

Its value is vastly inflated beyond that by the time it reaches its
western consumers.

Despite this, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest places on
Earth.

Collectively the farmers receive less than half a per cent of the
wealth generated by their illegal crops. Much of the revenue ends up
with local militias.

Environmentally friendly

The organization I work for, Spirit Aid, has developed a plan to
replace Afghan opium - 75% of the global supply - with industrial hemp.

Hemp is a fast growing, legal cash crop that presents a host of
immediate benefits to Afghan society, including a potentially
lucrative source of foreign exchange earnings.

Hemp can be used to produce heating and cooking fuel, thereby ending
the need for people to cut down and burn their remaining forests
during severe winters.

Using hemp in this way would also help prepare areas of land for
future tree planting projects.

It is part of the same family as cannabis, and the leaves of the two
are indistinguishable.

But there are other benefits to cultivating hemp.

Renewable energy

At the moment many Afghan children are malnourished. Hemp produces a
fruit boasting the nutritional qualities of soya, oily fish and wheat
combined.

Hemp can produce quantities of wood equivalent to four times that of
trees over a similar period of time. This biomass can be used in the
production of clean, renewable energy, biodegradable plastics and
building composites.

Hemp is currently being grown for these purposes in 36 countries
around the world, including Canada and some European Union countries.

If hemp could be successfully introduced in Afghanistan we believe
that:

* Those who depend on the 90,000 hectares of land dedicated to
opium poppies in Afghanistan would instead be able to cultivate
industrial hemp to provide heating, shelter, food and would have an
alternative source of revenue

* Communities in the West would no longer be flooded with cheap
heroin in this supply-driven industry

* The world would become a cleaner, healthier and more secure
place as the need to cut down old growth forests and burn the
remaining oil, coal and gas reserves is reduced.

Unique opportunity

Industrial hemp is perhaps the only economically and environmentally
viable alternative to opium cultivation in Afghanistan.

It presents an opportunity to satisfy the immediate fuel, fibre and
monetary requirements of two million farming households struggling to
survive in one of the most dangerous countries on earth.

Hemp cultivation also presents a unique opportunity for environmental
improvement in Afghanistan.

Crucially the international community has a moral obligation to
prevent a Colombian-style "war on drugs" from taking hold in
Afghanistan because if this happens we can be certain the violence,
and supply of opium, will never end.