Poverty is everywhere in Pakistan many people can’t afford to feed their families in Pakistan. Poverty also leads to many people becoming drug addicts and heroin in general is widely used in Pakistan by druggies. Additionally there’s tons of agricultural land in Pakistan not being used properly and many farmers aren’t making enough to feed their families.
Three main problems Pakistan faces:
1) lack of jobs
2) drug addiction
3) farmers not making enough
Pakistan’s biggest economic sector is agriculture and, most of the population has access to agriculture land either by renting it or because they own it. In addition, the government has tons of agricultural land not being used at the moment.
A solution to these problems could be Pakistan government issuing licenses to farmers to grow opium poppy. Farmers who have a license can grow opium poppy in specific areas and than sell their yield to the government of Pakistan. The government of Pakistan can sell this opium to big pharmaceutical companies. Currently the demand for medical opium in the world is very high but supply is low and now with recent events in Afghanistan supply will go to all time low. Medical opium is used in many products like pain killers so there’ll always be tons of demand. Additionally, Pakistan is mostly Sunni Muslims who follow the hanafi fiqh. In hanafi fiqh it allows us to sell the raw materials if their used for medical purposes.
Economic benefits:
A hectare of opium usually yields around 50 kilos of opium while wholesale price of opium is around $500 usd. This means per hectare $25,000 usd can be made easily by growing opium. Pakistani government can tax this and be responsible to sell it to foreign pharmaceutical companies so it can also gain much needed foreign reserve. Giving licenses for opium to be grown on 100,000 hectares means Pakistan can easily make $2.5 billion usd per year.
How will it work:
To make it work Pakistan can designate specific areas for growing medical opium. It can gives licenses for allowance to grow opium on upto 10 hectares per person so small level farmers benefit from it not big farmers. The yield will be sold to Pakistani government by farmers who will than sell it to the pharmaceutical companies. Inspectors can frequently patrol these designated areas to make sure farmers follow the rules and don’t break them.
How will it solves the 3 problems:
1) It will create lots of jobs since labourers will be needed to grow the crop.
2) Allowing medical opium to be legally grown by license and controlling its flow means the people who would normally grow it illegally can now grow it legally and make the same profit. They would rather be legal and grow it legally than illegally so criminals won’t be able to buy raw opium from farmers anymore which will lead to supply of illegal heroin to hit rock bottom.
3) Small level farmers who own less than 10 hectares of land can grown opium instead of other crops and make huge profits. Instead of growing crops like wheat and corn which make almost no profit they can grown opium and make huge amount of profit.
Now imagine the areas in Balochistan, Kpk, Sindh and south Punjab with lots of poverty grow this crop legally with a license!
Lastly if anyone messed it above, opium grown medically is allowed to be grown and sold in hanafi fiqh in Islam. The RAW materials that are grown for MEDICAL reasons are allowed and HALAL. Opium grown for heroin has to be REFINED and go through a LONG PROCESS. The RAW plant can’t be used to get high
