MP calls for Afghan heroin buy-up

Mr Murphy wants the opium destroyed

World leaders have been urged to buy Afghanistan's entire opium poppy crop and destroy it in a move against the heroin trade.

Scottish Labour Party MP Jim Murphy said UK Prime Minister Tony Blair should endorse the measure, which he believes would cost £40m.

Mr Murphy, MP for Eastwood, said the move would save the lives of thousands of heroin addicts in Britain.

Jim Murphy: "A clear choice"

But a drugs expert at a Scottish university said the move was not a long-term solution to the problem.

Dr Randy Yates warned that such a move "will not necessarily produce the advantages on the streets of the UK that we expect".

Mr Murphy made his call on Wednesday in the House of Commons during a backbench debate on Afghanistan's drugs trade.

"Before September 11, Afghanistan was in the process of exporting two major products," he said.

"One was training in terror - which was all too apparent tragically - and the other was heroin.

Cutting the supply

"We are rightly in the process of dealing with the threat of terror and I think it's now time we turned an equal level of attention to its second exported product."

Mr Murphy said extra international aid should be made available to Afghanistan if it succeeded in cutting the supply of drugs to the UK.

He estimated that about 90% of the heroin on Britain's streets came from Afghanistan.

The Eastwood MP believes the £40m would enable governments to destroy the crops, ensure the farmers could still feed their families and fund alternative crops for next year.

We are rightly in the process of dealing with the threat of terror and I think it's now time we turned an equal level of attention to its second exported product

Jim Murphy MP

He also outlined proposals to tackle Afghanistan's reliance on the drug trade, such as banning anyone still involved from government office or the armed forces.

He also called for efforts to help the country's own drug addicts.

Foreign Office minister Ben Bradshaw said there were "no plans at the moment" to buy the opium crop.

He warned that such a move could make the situation worse by making farmers believe that the drug crop could be exchanged for financial help and leading to increased production in other countries.

However, he said the government would "examine the proposal more carefully".

We do continually get these simplistic solutions to what is an incredibly complex problem

Dr Randy Yates, Stirling University

Dr Yates - a lecturer in addiction studies at Stirling University - said Mr Murphy's suggestion could "potentially" be beneficial.

He told BBC Radio Scotland: "It may make sense to purchase the crop this year, however one of the problems is that it smacks of 'with one mighty leap Jack was free'.

"We do continually get these simplistic solutions to what is an incredibly complex problem."

He predicted that the move would see less heroin coming into the UK - which would be less pure but more expensive.

"Lower levels of purity means higher levels of overdose - we know that from our experiences around the world," he said.

Reduce the demand

"Higher prices clearly mean more crime to buy the same amount of heroin.

"Even if it does work, it will not necessarily produce the advantages on the streets of the UK that we expect."

In the long-term, Dr Yates said more needed to be done to reduce the level of demand for heroin on Britain's streets.

"The genie is out of the bottle, we're not going to push the genie back into the bottle with simple solutions like buying up the heroin crop," he said.