Limitation on the Production of Opium

Abstract

As opium was one of the original drugs to be brought under an international control regime, it is appropriate to deal with this drug separately, in order to determine the present state of the control programme designed for it. Opium in the Single Convention has been classified under two categories, viz., medicinal opium and opium. While the former means “opium which has undergone the processes necessary to adapt it for medicinal use,” the latter means “the coagulated juice of the opium poppy.”¹ However, the Single Convention has brought all kinds of opium under the same regime by placing them in Schedule I.² The term “medicinal opium” has found expression in the Single Convention only once, in Article 23, paragraph 2, sub-paragraph (e),³ wherein it has been provided that medicinal opium and opium preparations may be excluded from government monopoly.