Many illicit drug growers are poor, vulnerable to unfair laws and arrangements and exploited by criminals and corrupt officials. However, many development programmes still ignore their plight. How can policymakers and practitioners help these forgotten people?

Illicit drug growers are often subject to inequitable land tenure and credit arrangements that mean they receive only a share of the final crop or are even forced to sell their share in advance at prices well below the harvest time rate. Growers pay high rates for inputs and receive low prices for their opium poppy or coca crops due to their distance from legal markets and lack of regulation. Growers find themselves ‘taxed’ by criminals, insurgents or warlords, or even government officials. The end result is that the gross returns per hectare do not reflect the actual incomes received by the majority of opium poppy and coca producing households.

• In Myanmar and Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), opium producing households earn around US$200 a year.
• In Viet Nam, highland communities growing opium poppy have the lowest household incomes in the country.
• In Buner and the Eastern Dir valley in Pakistan, the average per capita income was half the national average at a time when opium poppy cultivation in these areas was at its most prolific.
• In Afghanistan, even the relatively wealthy who may receive a higher return on opium poppy through their control of land and financial assets, still earn little more than a dollar a day in cash income per head of household.

In Afghanistan, opium poppy cultivation is most concentrated amongst households with limited access to irrigated land. These areas have the highest population densities and the highest levels of food insecurity. Provinces where cultivation is concentrated, as in Helmand and Nangarhar, are remote with few government services and where farmers are exploited by local warlords. There are few income opportunities apart from growing opium poppy. Indeed, in many areas of intense cultivation, opium poppy farmers are given preferential, if not sole, access to land, credit and off-farm income.

In Colombia, poverty is more prevalent in areas where people grow coca illegally. Narino, Meta and Caqueta are all areas of intensive coca cultivation, with many people in extreme poverty, high infant mortality rates and widespread malnutrition. Infrastructure, access to water and government health and social services are limited.

While over 90 percent of households in drug crop growing areas depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, the farming sector is structurally weak, with poor marketing, small landholdings, no credit facilities, and little irrigation. A combination of environmental degradation and poor agricultural practices also means low quality inputs or low yields, leading to greater reliance on opium and coca as a means of ensuring survival.  

In countries like Colombia, Myanmar and Afghanistan, illicit drug crop cultivation has become closely connected with conflict. This conflict typically takes the form of disputes over resources between socio-economic and ethnic groups. However, in places like Lao PDR, Peru, Pakistan and Thailand, armed conflict has occurred in areas of illicit drug crop cultivation leaving farmers vulnerable to intimidation and violence from the state and other groups.

The so called 'lucrative' drugs trade has not led to economic and social development. Those growing illicit drug crops continue to fall outside the mandate of mainstream development and are a difficult matter for many policymakers and practitioners. Does engagement with the drugs issue fit the values and remit of development organisations?

Development workers often assume opium poppy and coca producing households are wealthy. This ignores unfair land tenure, labour and credit arrangements, and the detrimental impact these have on the economic returns from agriculture. There is much to be done to convince the wider development community to engage in an area where it has a clear mandate.

No single project can address the many motivations and factors that influence illicit drug crop cultivation (even at a local level). The elimination of coca and opium poppy depends on the achievement of broader development goals, including: establishing the institutions required for formal governance and promoting civil society; strengthening social protection mechanisms; and encouraging legal income opportunities. 

There is a need for a broader ownership of the drug control agenda by national, bilateral, multilateral and non-government organisations, not just specialist drug control agencies. Already, development practitioners and experts are referring to ‘development in a drugs environment’: an approach that seeks to mainstream drugs control as a cross cutting issue within national development programmes.

The objectives are to:

• ensure that, where relevant, development programmes address the causes of the illicit drug problem in source countries
• ensure that development programmes are designed and implemented to maximise their potential impact on containing production, trade, and consumption of illicit drugs
• ensure that projects or activities don’t worsen the existing drugs problem
• work in areas where opium poppies and coca are grown or with socio-economic groups most dependent on opium poppies as a source of livelihood
• help build cooperation between activities that might maximise development and counter narcotics impact.

Source(s):
'Responding to the Challenge of Diversity in Opium Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan', by David Mansfield, in Afghanistan: Drugs Industry and Counter Narcotics Policy, UNODC/World Bank: Kabul, edited by William Byrd and Doris Buddenberg, November 2006 (PDF)
'Opium Poppy Eradication: How to Raise Risk When There is Nothing to Lose', Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit Briefing Paper, AREU: Kabul, David Mansfield and Adam Pain, August 2006 (PDF)
'Tackling drugs to reduce poverty', id21 insights health 10, February 2007

id21 Research Highlight: 23 January 2007

Further Information:
David Mansfield
Specialist on Development in a Drugs Environment

Contact the contributor: DavidMfld@aol.com

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'The khat industry at full capacity in eastern Africa'

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'Pushing tobacco control up the development agenda'

'Alcohol production and use in Africa'

'Reducing drug demand in Afghanistan'