Turkey may lift opium ban

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33563, 18 June 1974, Page 17

Turkey may lift opium ban

(N.Z P A.-Reuter—Copyright) ANKARA, June 17. The Turkish Government has only a few weeks to fulfil its election pledge to lift the American-sponsored ban on opium poppy cultivation.

As decision day nears — under present law a decree to resume poppy farming must be issued in June — United States diplomats are launching a last-ditch effort to save the ban. The Secretary of State (Dr Henrv Kissinger) is expected to visit Ankara within the next few weeks. The United States spent about SUSISm securing the ban. which took effect in 1972, cutting off the major source of heroin sold to American addicts.

The level of compensation has failed to convert the 100,000 former poppv farmers to the United States cause and the pressure on the Turkish Government to scrap the ban has been intense.

It has now become an emotional test of Turkish independence, with warnings of cuts in American aid only hardening the general opinion in favour of a resumption of poppv cultivation. Some farmers have

already jumped the gun and planted new crops. During the last week, police and gendarmarie units have burnt down poppy fields in four different villages and 64 farmers have been accused of defying the ban.

Before the 1972 ban cultivation was permitted in four of Turkey’s 67 provinces and an estimated one-third of the crop was illegally sold to smugglers. The rest was ■bought by the State to be I refined into morphine and i codine for medicinal pur- ' poses. I Earlier this year a com- ■ mittee set up by the i Republican People’s Party (R.P.P.) — senior partners in the coalition Government—recommended poppy farming resume in the same area of south-west Anatolia under strict security controls. . Turkish and American narcotics agents are extremely sceptical whether it is possible to devise controls that will stop farmers selling to smuggling rings.