The government plans to allow private companies, both Indian and foreign, to extract alkaloids from opium, currently a monopoly of Government Opium and Alkaloid Works. Sources said a vision document and action plan on encouraging privatisation of alkaloid extraction from opium would be released in a week.
In the National Policy on Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances announced last month, the government had said the private sector might be allowed production of alkaloids from opium.
Under the proposed guidelines, a company bidding for licence has to be a reputed manufacturer of bulk drugs/ pharmaceutical formulations, with a turnover of over Rs 100 crore during each year in past three years, earned through the pharmaceutical business only.
Currently, the government has monopoly on the entire process of production, pricing and disposal, including the enforcement.
The sources said the winning bidders would continue to extract alkaloid through the traditional method of lancing for sometime. But a timeline would be given during which the process would be entirely mechanised. “The ultimate aim is to graduate to mechanisation of the extraction process, from the current process of lancing, as per international best practices, and to avoid illegal trafficking,” they said.
However, they cautioned the mechanisation had a lot of socio-political implications, as it would deprive the farmers of any further use of the dry opium pods after latex extraction. This is because the farmers could not retain the poppy seed derived from dried opium to grow plants or use the dried plant as fodder as currently used. The poppy seed has tremendous market value as edible spice ingredient and oil extract. “Therefore, a comprehensive rehabilitation package needs to be worked out by the government for this community, primarily based in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, before the process is mechanised. Therefore, we will continue with the current process,” said one of the sources.
The sources clarified the government would continue to have its monopoly on various procedures, starting from growing the opium pod to collection of opium latex. After latex is collected, part of the refining process of latex into various chemicals will be allotted to private companies based on the licensing system.
Opium has immense industrial value as a raw material for morphine (the final product in the extraction process) and codeine, which are used by pharmaceutical companies for various medicinal preparations. These chemicals are collectively called alkaloids. India is one of the three major producers of opium, apart from Turkey and Afghanishtan, and exporters of alkaloids. It caters to more than half of the global requirement. The United States is the major importer of Indian opium extracts.