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Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali ruled out Monday the possibility of legalising Afghan opium production, the largest in the world, for making medicines. An international drug policy think-tank, The Senlis, suggested to President Hamid Karzai in December that Afghanistan could be offered a special licence for opium production for use in the manufacturing of medicines. "Changing this and legalising it from my view is not that easy and is not possible," Jalali told a press conference. "We cannot just legalise it," he said.
This included because, "The money which is being made from drugs, finances crime, terrorism, and also using this money some groups form private militia," he said.
Afghanistan produces 87 percent of the world's supply of the opium, according to United Nations. The UN and the US State Department have warned that the country is on the brink of becoming a narco-state.
Paris-based The Senlis suggested that the forced eradication of poppies, used to make opium, could risk undermining the nascent Afghan democracy.
Some 2.3 million Afghan farmers grow poppies and can make 10 times more money than they would cultivating legal crops.
The Senlis Council says in a statement on its website that it will launch a feasibility study for the creation of an opium licensing framework for Afghanistan, similar to frameworks already in place in Australia, France, Turkey and India.
Under the current international system, countries are free to apply for a licence from the UN's International Narcotics Control Board to legally produce and sell opium for medical purposes. Many countries, including Australia, France, Turkey and India, already produce opium legally under such licences.
Afghanistan saw a 64 percent leap in opium production in 2004 and has also branched into heroin refining over the past year, but the Afghan government backed by the international community is taking a harder line on the issue.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2005

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