Commodity Power
GORDON, WALTER R.
Washington-USA COMMODITY POWER BY WALTER R. GORDON Shortages, it is often said, have become a way of life in the United States. One month there is panic buying of toilet paper in Washington and...
...An extraordinary case in point is the fast-developing but generally unheralded shortage of several critical drugs, including heparin (the anticoagulant used to treat Richard Nixon's phlebitis), quinidine, injectible sodium ampicillin, and opium derivatives...
...Eventually the U.S...
...From the remainder the drug firms estimate they will be able to meet an additional 20 per cent of U.S...
...There's a vast and dangerous possibility-an actual cutoff of supply...
...At any rate, when a Senator and a representative of American business can agree that one of the poorest nations of the world has the United States virtually at its mercy over a minor commodity like opium, then indeed the old order is changing...
...For years, the leaders of the Third World have been trying to find a way to bring about a massive transfer of resources from the developed to the underdeveloped nations...
...Since the largest source was Turkey, Washington relentlessly pressured Ankara to ban the growing of opium and-after the U.S...
...The rest is converted into morphine for severe pain, and naloxone and nalorphine, two drugs employed to counteract the effects of narcotics addiction...
...This plant is still in the research stage, however, and commercial use is a long way off...
...grain shipments to avert widespread starvation, with the glowing example of the Mideast oil producers as a precedent and with production cartels forming in everything from bauxite to coffee, no responsible official can discount the potential for blackmail...
...A formal program of rationing bulk codeine will be inevitable in 1975...
...Of course, all estimates of the seriousness of the shortage are based on the word of interested parties -the drug industry and the medical profession...
...Walter R. Gordon, a former member of the Baltimore Sun's Washington bureau, is now freelancing...
...Now all that is beginning to change, and what could not be accomplished by foreign aid and boot-strap efforts may soon be achieved by cartels and ultimatums and blackmail...
...During the Senate hearings Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass...
...But even if some of the data are exaggerated and the worst fears do not materialize, there are two lessons to be learned from the opium story: First, it shows again how an attempt to solve one problem can all too easily create another of equal or greater proportions...
...The whole idea of scarcity is in fact so alien to America's traditional way of life that our reactions tend to veer erratically between the extremes of hysteria and cynical incredulity...
...It will become "difficult and then virtually impossible to fill codeine prescriptions at the pharmacy and in the hospital," Jane Lang McGrew, an attorney representing the only three licensed U.S...
...The story goes back to the beginning of the Nixon Administration, when the President and Attorney General John N. Mitchell were searching frantically for policies to fulfill their campaign promises of a war on crime...
...The alternative, they say, would be a complete breakdown in production...
...To insure supplies in at least the neediest cases, the manufacturers are expected to move toward some kind of rationing system...
...To begin with, the hiatus caused a serious gap in the supply chain...
...This creates difficulties for American processors because U.S...
...The House Armed Services Committee and two Senate subcommittees have held hearings on the problem, drug industry spokesmen have given speeches about it and several government agencies are struggling quietly to find remedies...
...Even if India achieves an anticipated 12 per cent increase in its crop yield, according to drug industry data, it will be able to produce only 60 per cent of American needs in 1975...
...The lawyer replied, "Senator, you've outlined a very frightening idea...
...law prohibits importation of the straw, and even if that were to be changed we do not have the facilities to handle it...
...Though five countries besides Turkey and India are authorized by international treaty to grow opium (the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Iran), for a variety of reasons none is expected to provide any substantial amount for the American market...
...Due to domestic political and economic pressures, the Turks have now resumed growing poppies, but the problem will not soon be solved...
...One answer was to attack drug addiction and drug-related crime by making heroin harder to buy...
...Incredible as it may sound, the shortage could ultimately put the American patient at the mercy of India, one of the world's poorest and weakest countries but also the current supplier of almost all of the legal opium in the United States...
...manufacturers (Mallinckrodt, Merck and Company, and S.B...
...That means one out of every five patients will have to switch to a less desirable substitute or do without...
...has been forced to rely almost entirely on India, and it has refused to expand its opium acreage...
...As a stopgap measure, in 1973 the industry persuaded Washington to release 238 tons of opium from the national stockpile of strategic materials...
...A major stumbling block was the fact that the producers of raw materials were at the economic mercy of the industrial countries...
...may be able to meet its opium needs by growing a poppy called papaver bracteatum-a source of codeine but not of the morphine from which heroin is made...
...One month there is panic buying of toilet paper in Washington and the next month a riot over canned goods in Los Angeles...
...offered to compensate Turkish farmers for their revenue losses-the crop was temporarily outlawed...
...But so far the situation has not made a dent in the public consciousness...
...Indeed, with India bargaining desperately for increased U.S...
...Moreover, there are no fully comparable synthetic substitutes, and the possibilities of somehow procuring substantial additional opium supplies are nil...
...But with last winter's gas lines and fuel allocations now a fading nightmare, such stories are beginning to take on a freakish man-bites-dog quality...
...chairman of the two subcommittees, asked McGrew, "Suppose India says unless we get food, you won't get opium...
...requirements, thereby satisfying a total of 80 per cent of demand in 1975...
...Secondly, to reduce the likelihood of illegal diversion, the farmers must harvest the entire poppy capsule and stem (called the straw), rather than lance the capsule and collect only the gum...
...Yet there is new evidence almost every day that the shortages are real, and while they hardly signal the apocalyptic collapse of the world's wealthiest nation, they do signify a complex of problems, sacrifices and changes with profound implications for the future...
...If information submitted by the drug industry and the medical profession is accurate-and most of those familiar with the subject are inclined to accept it-the United States is not going to have adequate quantities of codeine and morphine to meet patient demand over at least the next couple of years...
...Thus the U.S...
...The opium scarcity is particularly dramatic...
...About 95 per cent of the opium imported to this country is made into codeine and used to treat coughs and relieve pain in a wide range of ailments...
...As is true in the case of so many shortages-wheat, corn, soybeans, sugar and possibly even oil and gas -the American government has had a generous hand in its own undoing...
...Second, it shows how power-as measured by control over essential commodities -is shifting in the world...
...Penick and Company) recently told a startled Senate panel...
...Small quantities are sometimes bought from governments that have seized smuggled opium, but this source is insignificant...
Vol. 58 • January 1975 • No. 1
