Could Opium Gum be the Solution to the Overdose Crisis?

The prohibitionist regime surrounding the adult use of drugs has had devastating impacts on individuals, communities, and entire regions, spurring corruption, deteriorating the rule of law, and resulting in numerous human rights violations.  The harms of prohibition have been broadly documented and yet, policy makers and politicians continue to uphold the status quo, even as policy innovations demonstrate a new and progressive way forward. 

The illegal heroin market has dramatically transformed in the last few years, with the substitution or adulteration of fentanyl “poisoning” the market and spurring an overdose crisis tragically seen in the United States and Canada, among other nations. Within this context, as overdose deaths rise, the price of opium gum, as it is known before it is transformed into heroin, has fallen by 80% since 2018. This drop in prices directly impacts cultivating communities in Mexico, which use poppy crops as a complementary cultivation along with subsistence farming. 

As researchers and advocates for drug policy reforms centred on people, human rights, sustainable development, harm reduction, pleasure, and social justice, we have been working in Mexico to highlight how opium gum could become one of several opiate-based products offered within a legal market that simultaneously combats the poverty of cultivating communities and prevents overdoses of people who inject drugs. (Talking Drugs, UK, 22.08.2022)

https://www.talkingdrugs.org/could-opium-gum-be-the-solution-to-the-overdose-crisis