Morphine caution
Re: "Opium seen as promising medicinal crop", (BP, Nov 13).
Due to irreversible injuries from an accident in 2003, I am a chronic pain patient who has been prescribed (mainly) morphine for approximately 14 years, as there is no other medication which presently exists to treat an irreversible injury from that accident; a cranial nerve which is 40% severed.
Given my firsthand experience as a patient, I might have two significant things to add to the conversation about Thailand growing opium to make some of its own vital pain medications, including morphine.
The first thing I would add is that, while modern medicine is not yet at a point where it can find other new, non-narcotic medications to shut down all chronic pain, medicine is moving in that direction and there are some conditions, such as chronic, intractable migraines, where today Triptan-based & CGRP-based (non-narcotic) medications are being used to treat that condition. Whereas 20 or 30 years ago, doctors would have been reaching for opium-based pain relievers, like morphine, as the last line of treatment.
It is only a matter of time with advancing technology before modern medicine eventually finds a non-narcotic "off-switch" which will then relegate many or all opium-based pain relievers to the dustbin of history.
The second and even more important point I would add is that, unlike my home country of America, Thailand did not recently have an opioid crisis mainly involving hospital drugs.
If Thailand starts self-manufacturing morphine, as well as perhaps other opium-based medications, and growing opium as a crop, the country could set itself up for serious, unintended consequences; rather like many of the unintended consequences which have occurred after Thailand legalised cannabis, another narcotic crop.
So, since opium-based pain relievers are clearly in their waning years and new, non-narcotic alternatives are already arriving for more-and-more incurable conditions, my best advice is to leave the system as it is because "video will kill the radio star" and it is likely within a decade or two opioid-based medications will be replaced by new technology; making this an investment I would strongly advise against.
Jason A Jellison
