Fianna Fáil MEP Eoin Ryan has backed an initiative to encourage Afghan farmers to grow poppies for the production of medicines rather than the heroin trade.
Under the village-based programme, known as Poppy for Medicine (P4M), the farmers would be urged to grow their crops for conventional medicinal purposes such as the manufacture of morphine tablets.
The project is managed by the Senlis Council, which is a security and development policy group with offices in a number of cities worldwide, including Brussels and Kabul.
Mr Ryan, who was formerly minister of state with responsibility for National Drug Strategy, said research shows that in over 150 countries, containing about 80 per cent of the world's population, only "a tiny minority" of the patients have access to morphine if they need it.
"Millions of people, particularly cancer and HIV/Aids sufferers in emerging countries, live and die in unnecessary pain because their needs for essential morphine medicines are not being met," the Dublin MEP said.
In addition to meeting this demand, the P4M programme would help to tackle the illegal opium economy of Afghanistan and cut the production of heroin, he argued, adding that similar projects have already been successful in Turkey and India.
Global opium production reached 8,870 metric tonnes last year, with Afghanistan alone accounting for 92 per cent of the world's supply of the key ingredient for heroin. Around 90 per cent of the heroin sold in Ireland originates in Afghanistan.
Poppy production in Afghanistan is largely controlled by the Taliban. It has soared despite Western governments pouring billions of euro into trying to stamp it out.
The Senlis Council argues that the forced eradication of poppy crops and the failure of poppy substitution programmes are fuelling support for the Taliban. Mr Ryan said this shows that a "radical re-think approach" is needed.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its World Drug Report 2008, published in June, that while cultivation of the opium poppy stabilized or dropped in many parts of Afghanistan, five southern regions controlled by Taliban militants produced enough poppy to double the world's opium output between 2005 and 2007.
The United Nations warned last month that drug bosses in Afghanistan have started to recruit foreign chemists to help turn raw opium into highly-refined heroin.
