How did we allow this killer trade to bloom? Why, then, was another avenue not explored? Nearly eight years ago, an international think tank, the Senlis Council, proposed an alternative approach: the West should buy the crop. Afghanistan's poppy farmers would be licensed to produce opium for palliative medicines. There is a world shortage of pain-killing drugs, chiefly morphine and codeine, so why not put the poppy production on a legitimate basis? At present, opium poppies come mainly from India, where 130,000 accredited farmers raise crops under strict controls. Some are even grown here in the UK, their striking lilac colours visible in the fields of Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Herefordshire. The opium is then processed into pain-killers. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says a handful of Western industrialised countries consume three quarters of available opium-based medicines and even they do not have enough to meet demand, especially with an ageing population. The WHO estimates that about 83 per cent of the world's population have "low to nonexistent access" to palliative drugs. Needless to say, Afghanistan is one of many developing countries that has little or no access to these medications. To many looking in from the outside, putting production on a legitimate footing seemed eminently sensible and yet it was peremptorily dismissed by Nato governments. The International Narcotics Control Board, a UN agency, called it "simplistic" and said it "does not take into account the complex situation in the country." This scepticism might have been well-founded if the UN had come up with a better idea. But it clearly didn't. Here in Britain, the same ministers who unrealistically raised expectations of British troops eradicating the crop said the idea of turning an illegal trade into a positive one was "inappropriate," though without fully explaining why. One concern was that the whole country could become a drug-producing state. Another was that it would discourage farmers from moving into other crops, as in the "Golden Triangle" countries, where land once under opium poppies now grows cash crops, such as asparagus. But there has been little in the way of diversification in Afghanistan. Whenever crop eradication is tried - as with the coca plant in Colombia - it tends to fail unless a legitimate alternative is available. It might be possible to kill the drugs trade by suppressing demand, but that remains as strong as ever. When the Home Office publishes yet another set of law and order measures later today, many of them will be aimed at dealing with crime linked to drugs. So, when it was apparent that no inroads at all were being made against the Afghan poppy production, Western governments should at least have examined the Senlis plan. Had they done so, they might have had something tangible to show for the sacrifice of blood and treasure. Now it is probably too late.