In the land of Oz, or is it Ogg? Poppies for Pay?

[amicus]

Tell me it ain't so, my Britster Litsters, I mean like we Yanks do have an English Heritage and I think they conspired to organize the first, "Tea Party".

Not this, c'mon Ogg, this is just too, too much!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...opium-poppies-tackle-NHS-morphine-crisis.html

In Afghanistan, British troops are fighting a ferocious and often lethal war to eradicate the country's opium poppy crop.

Yet, as our soldiers risk their lives daily, large swathes of the English countryside are being turned over to the very same crop - with the full backing of the Government.

Farmers(in England) are cultivating the poppies to combat a critical shortage of morphine in NHS hospitals, and are finding it a lucrative crop.

~~~

Okay, I'm a pretty fair minded guy, considering; so....what am I missing here? (Catch 22 doesn't even cover this?)

Amicus

 

[ozymandiask]

Oz

Fist guess was right - The land of OZ http://www.justice.tas.gov.au/poppy/the_industry/poppy_production_in_tasmania

The country looks really pretty in November which in Tassie is early summer. The two processing companies are both American and I think that this is the worlds biggest legal crop - all for pharmacy.

 

[amicus]

0]Fist guess was right - The land of OZ http://www.justice.tas.gov.au/poppy/the_industry/poppy_production_in_tasmania

The country looks really pretty in November which in Tassie is early summer. The two processing companies are both American and I think that this is the worlds biggest legal crop - all for pharmacy[/I].

~~~

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium

Legal opium importation from India and Turkey is conducted by Mallinckrodt, Noramco, Abbott Laboratories, and Purdue Pharma in the United States, and legal opium production is conducted by GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson and Johnson, Johnson Matthey, and Mayne in Tasmania, Australia; Sanofi Aventis in France; Shionogi Pharmaceutical in Japan; and MacFarlan Smith in the United Kingdom.[78] The UN treaty requires that every country submit annual reports to the International Narcotics Control Board, stating that year's actual consumption of many classes of controlled drugs as well as opioids and projecting required quantities for the next year. This is to allow trends in consumption to be monitored and production quotas allotted.

~~~

All...and probably more than anyone, myself included, that you might want to know about the history of Poppy growing, Opium and Heroin & Morphine is included in the Wiki piece.

Thanks for the inspiration; learned some things I did not know before...

Amicus

 

[oggbashan]

One of the suggestions made to the Afghan administration and the US commanders is that Afghan farmers be ALLOWED to grow opium as a cash crop and sell it through legal channels because there is a worldwide shortage of medical products made from opium.

It seems too sensible to be agreed.

Og