Something for the pain

摘要

Soon Afghan farmers will start planting the poppy fields that are the main source of the opiates that feed the world's illegal heroin trade. Billions of dollars will be spent trying to destroy the crops and stop the trafficking.rnDrug addiction and the ramifications of the illegal drug trade need tobedealt with. But there is another drug problem that arguably causes far more suffering but gets only a fraction of the attention: the chronic underuse of opiate-based painkillers in poor countries.rnGlobal consumption of these drugs has more than doubled in the last two decades as the alleviation of pain has come to be taken more seriously. Yet in the developing world they are hardly ever used: there, according to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), 80 per cent of the world's population consume just 6 per cent of its morphine, the most widely available opioid for treating moderate to severe pain.