Berkeley Electronic Press is pleased to announce the publication of a cross-cutting new article in Journal of Drug Policy Analysis, a Journal of Substance Abuse Control Policy, analyzing the implications of legalizing Afghanistan’s opium trade.

“Is Medicinal Opium Production Afghanistan’s Answer?: Lessons from India and the World Market,” by Victoria A. Greenfield, Letizia Paoli, and Peter H. Reuter, argues that legal medicinal opium production is an improbable answer to the problems that underlie and arise from Afghanistan's dominance of the world heroin market.

Examining both India’s experience as the world’s sole licensed exporter of raw opium and the world market for legal opiates, Greenfield, Paoli and Reuter argue that “Poppy for Medicine” cannot be expected to greatly reduce illegal production or corruption in Afghanistan, or do much to lift the nation out of poverty. The authors find that illegal production will continue; diversion from the legal market to the illegal market is inevitable; diversion will involve further corruption; there may not be a market; and Afghanistan lacks the institutional capacity to support a legal pharmaceutical industry.

To read the full text of the article at no cost, please visit: http://www.bepress.com/jdpa/vol2/iss1/art3

About Journal of Drug Policy Analysis: A Journal of Substance Abuse Control Policy

Journal of Drug Policy Analysis focuses on practical, policy-analytic insights on the problems and policies of drug abuse control. Short peer-reviewed articles and essays analyze every aspect of the policy problems posed by abusable psychoactives, licit and illicit, anywhere in the world. Using data-driven and conceptual approaches, as well as the methods of the social and biological sciences, the humanities, medicine, public health, law, law enforcement, and public management, the journal emphasizes informed policy analysis: the stakes in a given policy choice, and the terms of the tradeoffs among the values and interests in play. Edited by prominent scholars at RAND and UCLA, Journal of Drug Policy Analysis drives the public and scholarly conversation about how to deal with the issues surrounding drug policy, a conversation of vital interest to drug policy researchers, criminologists, economists, physicians, and those who make decisions about drug policy.

About Berkeley Electronic Press

Founded by professors in 1999, Berkeley Electronic Press publishes peer-reviewed electronic journals and develops software for the next generation of scholarly publishing.

The bepress journals collection, ResearchNow, redefines what scholarly journals can do today, with fast and high quality peer review at sustainable prices.

The bepress open-access institutional repository platform, Digital Commons, is the world's leading hosted IR, featuring an innovative suite of publishing and software services that empowers scholarly communities to showcase and share their works for maximum impact.

For additional information on bepress, please see: www.bepress.com