No more lost lives : Communities rising against opium
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Chongboi Haokip, MCIHort
We must raise more awareness, as we never know, there might be some who are not fully aware of the harmful effects of opium poppy cultivation and its lasting impact on individuals, families, and society. We cannot keep silent !
Children are our precious gift from God who will continue the human race. We have a moral duty to safeguard them even when they are in their mother’s womb.
The illicit opium poppy links survival farming, dependency, and reproductive health. Pregnant individuals face severe risks such as miscarriage and fetal growth restriction. Effective solutions need community and structural change, not only individual treatment. Communities themselves hold the key to breaking cycles of harm that threaten both current and future generations.
Understanding the Interconnected Crisis
Opioids are drugs that come from the opium poppy or act like its natural compounds. They affect the brain and produce effects that include pain relief (Johns Hopkins Medicine, no date). Opium poppy produces alkaloids such as morphine and codeine that cross the placenta and disrupt fetal brain development, oxygen flow, and uterine stability -(Giovannini et al Feb 2024; Chen et al Nov 2022.) These biological effects raise the risk of pregnancy loss. Yet the problem reaches beyond physiology.
For instance, in Afghanistan, opiate production and export have long been the main illegal economic activity and a key rural income source. In 2022, poppy cultivation accounted for 29 percent of the agricultural sector. For many years, opiate exports were worth more than all officially recorded legal exports - UNODC Nov 2023. This financial trap drives their decisions. When legal crops bring in far less money, many families face hard choices.
Pregnant individuals in these communities face both personal strain and wider system failures when they use or are exposed to opioids. Women and girls work long hours in poppy fields with limited healthcare or schooling. They come into contact with plant latex, dust, and opium present in their villages. For women of reproductive age, this exposure raises early pregnancy risks, often before they know they are pregnant - Flannagan et al 2001.
The Grower’s Hidden Burden
Talk about opium often centres on distant users and ignores the people who grow the crop. Farmers who cut pods and collect latex are constantly exposed through their skin and through dust. Their families share the same air and materials, living in an environment where the substance can steadily affect their bodies.
When a pregnant person in a growing household faces opioid exposure, multiple risks converge. Respiratory depression reduces maternal blood oxygen levels, and since the foetus receives oxygen only through the placenta, each episode adds stress that increases the chance of early pregnancy loss -Giovannini et al Feb 2024.
Food insecurity, poor nutrition, and limited prenatal monitoring add to the strain on pregnant individuals in poppy-growing areas.
The Power of Community-Led Awareness
Effective change starts within communities where trust is strong, and culture guides daily life. Local groups offer knowledge of conditions, existing relationships, and respected leaders whose influence supports lasting progress.
Trusted Local Voices Matter Most: Teachers, midwives, birth attendants, faith leaders, and youth volunteers reach people who seldom use formal services. They share a language and culture, so they know which messages matter and which barriers keep people from seeking help. A long-serving midwife brings credibility when she explains risks. Faith leaders motivate families to seek prenatal care. Youth volunteers influence attitudes among the next generation.
What Effective Programs Include : Effective community awareness programs give clear, locally shaped information on how opioids affect pregnancy, including risks like miscarriage, poor fetal growth, and neonatal withdrawal. They warn about the dangers of intense homemade poppy preparations, such as pod or seed teas. They promote early prenatal care and encourage honest discussion of substance use so clinicians can offer safer treatment. Support groups can create safe spaces for women to discuss health and hardship, and youth programs provide alternatives to working in poppy fields.
Linking Awareness to Concrete Services: Information alone changes little without supporting infrastructure. The most effective community initiatives connect awareness to tangible resources: helplines for crisis moments, referral pathways to addiction treatment, mobile clinics that bring prenatal care to remote areas, and legal advice on land disputes or debt.
An integrated approach, supported by State-level programs that combine crop eradication, anti-drug awareness, and the promotion of alternative liveli- hoods on former poppy land is essential. When communities see real economic alternatives emerging alongside health messaging, behavioural change becomes possible.
Recommendations for Sustainable Community Action
Build Multi-Sector Coalitions : No single group can solve the linked problems of narcotic farming, reproductive health, and poverty. Communities need coalitions that unite health workers, agricultural advisers, educators, women’s groups, and local officials. These partnerships provide linkage between education and income support, connect prenatal care with addiction treatment, and align environmental repair with improved food security.
Center Women’s Leadership: Women in poppy-growing areas face distinct burdens but also understand household and health needs in ways outsiders do not. Programs are strongest when women lead them. Female health workers reach pregnant individuals who avoid male providers. Women’s cooperatives introduce new crops and build income. Mother-to-mother networks share guidance on substance use/exposure, pregnancy issues, and recovery in ways formal counselling cannot provide.
Adopt a Harm Reduction Framework : Moral judgment and criminalisation drive people underground, away from the help they need. Communities must embrace harm reduction: meeting people where they are, reducing immediate risks even before complete abstinence, and providing substitution medications that stabilise preg- nant individuals. Evidence-based treatment uses super- vised medications that stabilise the body, prevent withdrawal, and support a healthier pregnancy environment.
Address Economic Roots: When poverty persists, it fails health efforts. Sustainable development offers a stable legal income before strict eradication and prevents deeper hardship. Communities need help with crop diversification, stronger market access, microcredit, and better infrastructure. When farmers earn stable incomes without opium, and women gain work beyond field labour, economic incentives begin to support health goals.
Integrate Services Holistically: A holistic approach is essential in linking maternal care, addiction treatment, and mental health within rural health services while restoring damaged land through reforestation and soil conservation. Symptoms faced by pregnant individuals with opioid dependency are often anxiety, depression, and trauma, so treatment must address these needs. Rebuilding the environment improves nutrition, which supports healthier pregnancies.
Invest in Youth Education: Children will shape future choices about cultivation, substance use, and family health. Education is needed on reproductive health, substance risks, and safer livelihood options.
Lessons for Manipur - Thailand’s Doi Tung Development Project
The Doi Tung Development Project shows how poppy-growing regions can shift when development comes before enforcement. Beginning in the 1980s, it replaced opium cultivation with income from coffee and macadamia, better roads and water systems, access to schools and clinics, forest restoration, and strong market links.
The Mae Fah Luang Foundation led the effort and treated villagers as partners. The results included sustained reductions in opium cultivation, higher school enrolment, greater access to healthcare, improved forests, and steady legal incomes. The project worked because it tackled poverty, limited options, and weak services before asking communities to change crops. Sustainable development - first strategies that provide real alternatives and stronger services create conditions where communities move away from opium on their own - Collins et al March 2021; UNODC (no date).
A Vision for Collective Progress
To reiterate, illicit poppy cultivation harms pregnancy and requires our collective community effort for resolutions. Community knowledge, trust, and cultural ties offer protection that formal systems cannot provide. Real progress means respectful prenatal care, safer livelihoods, reduced exposure for children, and healthier land.
This shift needs time, resources, and political backing. The current cycle of poverty, dependency, pregnancy loss, and environ- mental decline cannot continue.
Communities have the responsibility and the ability to build safer futures. Through coordinated poppy programs, integrated services, and genuine alterna- tives, they can protect pregnant individuals, support growers, and build futures where neither livelihood nor new life depends on substances that endanger both.
We should continue to have hope, as it helps us move in the right direction with purpose. This promise offers hope to communities struggling with addiction, poverty, and loss. It reminds us that no person is beyond redemption, no community beyond restoration, and no challenge beyond the reach of compassionate, sustained effort grounded in faith and human dignity.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.”— Psalm 34:18-19 NIV.
Statement: I do not support illegal poppy cultiva- tion. I support sustainable alternatives that strengthen society and help affected farmers in Manipur. I stand firmly behind the Manipur Government’s ‘War on Drugs’ campaign. As a strong, united community, we must work alongside government agencies that are helping farmers abandon illegal poppy farming. We, the people of Manipur, can eliminate unlawful poppy cultivation through collective effort. I call upon the entire Manipur community to unite as one team in this fight against illegal cultivation of poppy, working together to create sustainable livelihoods and a healthier future for all.
About the author: Chongboi Haokip, MCIHort, is an international development consultant specialising in agriculture, horticulture, and trade facilitation.
We must raise more awareness, as we never know, there might be some who are not fully aware of the harmful effects of opium poppy cultivation and its lasting impact on individuals, families, and society. We cannot keep silent !
Children are our precious gift from God who will continue the human race. We have a moral duty to safeguard them even when they are in their mother’s womb.
The illicit opium poppy links survival farming, dependency, and reproductive health. Pregnant individuals face severe risks such as miscarriage and fetal growth restriction. Effective solutions need community and structural change, not only individual treatment. Communities themselves hold the key to breaking cycles of harm that threaten both current and future generations.
Understanding the Interconnected Crisis
Opioids are drugs that come from the opium poppy or act like its natural compounds. They affect the brain and produce effects that include pain relief (Johns Hopkins Medicine, no date). Opium poppy produces alkaloids such as morphine and codeine that cross the placenta and disrupt fetal brain development, oxygen flow, and uterine stability -(Giovannini et al Feb 2024; Chen et al Nov 2022.) These biological effects raise the risk of pregnancy loss. Yet the problem reaches beyond physiology.
For instance, in Afghanistan, opiate production and export have long been the main illegal economic activity and a key rural income source. In 2022, poppy cultivation accounted for 29 percent of the agricultural sector. For many years, opiate exports were worth more than all officially recorded legal exports - UNODC Nov 2023. This financial trap drives their decisions. When legal crops bring in far less money, many families face hard choices.
Pregnant individuals in these communities face both personal strain and wider system failures when they use or are exposed to opioids. Women and girls work long hours in poppy fields with limited healthcare or schooling. They come into contact with plant latex, dust, and opium present in their villages. For women of reproductive age, this exposure raises early pregnancy risks, often before they know they are pregnant - Flannagan et al 2001.
The Grower’s Hidden Burden
Talk about opium often centres on distant users and ignores the people who grow the crop. Farmers who cut pods and collect latex are constantly exposed through their skin and through dust. Their families share the same air and materials, living in an environment where the substance can steadily affect their bodies.
When a pregnant person in a growing household faces opioid exposure, multiple risks converge. Respiratory depression reduces maternal blood oxygen levels, and since the foetus receives oxygen only through the placenta, each episode adds stress that increases the chance of early pregnancy loss -Giovannini et al Feb 2024.
Food insecurity, poor nutrition, and limited prenatal monitoring add to the strain on pregnant individuals in poppy-growing areas.
The Power of Community-Led Awareness
Effective change starts within communities where trust is strong, and culture guides daily life. Local groups offer knowledge of conditions, existing relationships, and respected leaders whose influence supports lasting progress.
Trusted Local Voices Matter Most: Teachers, midwives, birth attendants, faith leaders, and youth volunteers reach people who seldom use formal services. They share a language and culture, so they know which messages matter and which barriers keep people from seeking help. A long-serving midwife brings credibility when she explains risks. Faith leaders motivate families to seek prenatal care. Youth volunteers influence attitudes among the next generation.
What Effective Programs Include : Effective community awareness programs give clear, locally shaped information on how opioids affect pregnancy, including risks like miscarriage, poor fetal growth, and neonatal withdrawal. They warn about the dangers of intense homemade poppy preparations, such as pod or seed teas. They promote early prenatal care and encourage honest discussion of substance use so clinicians can offer safer treatment. Support groups can create safe spaces for women to discuss health and hardship, and youth programs provide alternatives to working in poppy fields.
Linking Awareness to Concrete Services: Information alone changes little without supporting infrastructure. The most effective community initiatives connect awareness to tangible resources: helplines for crisis moments, referral pathways to addiction treatment, mobile clinics that bring prenatal care to remote areas, and legal advice on land disputes or debt.
An integrated approach, supported by State-level programs that combine crop eradication, anti-drug awareness, and the promotion of alternative liveli- hoods on former poppy land is essential. When communities see real economic alternatives emerging alongside health messaging, behavioural change becomes possible.
Recommendations for Sustainable Community Action
Build Multi-Sector Coalitions : No single group can solve the linked problems of narcotic farming, reproductive health, and poverty. Communities need coalitions that unite health workers, agricultural advisers, educators, women’s groups, and local officials. These partnerships provide linkage between education and income support, connect prenatal care with addiction treatment, and align environmental repair with improved food security.
Center Women’s Leadership: Women in poppy-growing areas face distinct burdens but also understand household and health needs in ways outsiders do not. Programs are strongest when women lead them. Female health workers reach pregnant individuals who avoid male providers. Women’s cooperatives introduce new crops and build income. Mother-to-mother networks share guidance on substance use/exposure, pregnancy issues, and recovery in ways formal counselling cannot provide.
Adopt a Harm Reduction Framework : Moral judgment and criminalisation drive people underground, away from the help they need. Communities must embrace harm reduction: meeting people where they are, reducing immediate risks even before complete abstinence, and providing substitution medications that stabilise preg- nant individuals. Evidence-based treatment uses super- vised medications that stabilise the body, prevent withdrawal, and support a healthier pregnancy environment.
Address Economic Roots: When poverty persists, it fails health efforts. Sustainable development offers a stable legal income before strict eradication and prevents deeper hardship. Communities need help with crop diversification, stronger market access, microcredit, and better infrastructure. When farmers earn stable incomes without opium, and women gain work beyond field labour, economic incentives begin to support health goals.
Integrate Services Holistically: A holistic approach is essential in linking maternal care, addiction treatment, and mental health within rural health services while restoring damaged land through reforestation and soil conservation. Symptoms faced by pregnant individuals with opioid dependency are often anxiety, depression, and trauma, so treatment must address these needs. Rebuilding the environment improves nutrition, which supports healthier pregnancies.
Invest in Youth Education: Children will shape future choices about cultivation, substance use, and family health. Education is needed on reproductive health, substance risks, and safer livelihood options.
Lessons for Manipur - Thailand’s Doi Tung Development Project
The Doi Tung Development Project shows how poppy-growing regions can shift when development comes before enforcement. Beginning in the 1980s, it replaced opium cultivation with income from coffee and macadamia, better roads and water systems, access to schools and clinics, forest restoration, and strong market links.
The Mae Fah Luang Foundation led the effort and treated villagers as partners. The results included sustained reductions in opium cultivation, higher school enrolment, greater access to healthcare, improved forests, and steady legal incomes. The project worked because it tackled poverty, limited options, and weak services before asking communities to change crops. Sustainable development - first strategies that provide real alternatives and stronger services create conditions where communities move away from opium on their own - Collins et al March 2021; UNODC (no date).
A Vision for Collective Progress
To reiterate, illicit poppy cultivation harms pregnancy and requires our collective community effort for resolutions. Community knowledge, trust, and cultural ties offer protection that formal systems cannot provide. Real progress means respectful prenatal care, safer livelihoods, reduced exposure for children, and healthier land.
This shift needs time, resources, and political backing. The current cycle of poverty, dependency, pregnancy loss, and environ- mental decline cannot continue.
Communities have the responsibility and the ability to build safer futures. Through coordinated poppy programs, integrated services, and genuine alterna- tives, they can protect pregnant individuals, support growers, and build futures where neither livelihood nor new life depends on substances that endanger both.
We should continue to have hope, as it helps us move in the right direction with purpose. This promise offers hope to communities struggling with addiction, poverty, and loss. It reminds us that no person is beyond redemption, no community beyond restoration, and no challenge beyond the reach of compassionate, sustained effort grounded in faith and human dignity.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.”— Psalm 34:18-19 NIV.
Statement: I do not support illegal poppy cultiva- tion. I support sustainable alternatives that strengthen society and help affected farmers in Manipur. I stand firmly behind the Manipur Government’s ‘War on Drugs’ campaign. As a strong, united community, we must work alongside government agencies that are helping farmers abandon illegal poppy farming. We, the people of Manipur, can eliminate unlawful poppy cultivation through collective effort. I call upon the entire Manipur community to unite as one team in this fight against illegal cultivation of poppy, working together to create sustainable livelihoods and a healthier future for all.
About the author: Chongboi Haokip, MCIHort, is an international development consultant specialising in agriculture, horticulture, and trade facilitation.