Rather than trying to eradicate Afghanistan's opium poppy crop, Western governments should buy out farmers and use the raw materials to create morphine drugs to ease pain among the world's poor, some experts say.

The New York Times reported Oct. 14 that advocates point to reports showing that 6.2 million people worldwide lack proper pain medication for cancer, AIDS, burns, and wounds. The U.K.-based Senlis Council estimates that the entire annual opium crop in Afghanistan could be purchased for $600 million, whereas the U.S. and Britain are spending more than $800 million -- and risking soldiers' lives -- trying to wipe out the crop.

"Enforcement will not work," said Romesh Bhattacharji, who has investigated the Afghan situation for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. "The Afghan farmer will not switch to alternative crops as long as there is a market for his opium."

Both the U.S. and Great Britain oppose the idea. "They're growing a poison, sir — one that kills Afghanistan's neighbors and corrupts officials," said Thomas A. Schweich, chief of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. "There needs to be better and more forceful eradication."

Opponents also say that drug smugglers pay better than governments, so the illicit trade would continue. "You can do the math," Schweich said. "If we did it, no one in Afghanistan would grow any other crop, we'd be paying billions for it, and it would become a narco-welfare state."

However, the U.S. has a history of buying drug crops from other nations, such as Turkey and India.