The 13-year-old factory will be restored under the direction of Excise’s Director General (DG). The administrative affairs will be handled by an officer with the rank of ETO.
The biggest opium factory in Asia will reopen as the Punjab government has decided. The required preparations have been made, including submitting an application for an arms licence for the Shadman factory.
The 13-year-old factory will be restored under the direction of Excise’s Director General (DG). The administrative affairs will be handled by an officer with the rank of Electro-Technical Officer (ETO).
To guarantee a consistent supply, opium will be purchased from Narcotics Control Agencies in various provinces. It should not be long before the first shipment of 640 kg arrives. The factory will produce A-category opium, which will be priced at Rs. 40,000 per kilogramme.
A-category opium is available for sale to pharmaceutical companies at fair prices, while B-category opium, which is dangerous to human health, will be discarded.
The opium factory will resume operations in accordance with the specifications of the official opium alkaloid factory established under the Hudud Ordinance 1979 in Lahore once the staff and arms licence has been issued. It’s interesting that the Excise and Taxation Department of Punjab closed this factory in 2012 without giving a reason.
Despite there being a steady demand for medical-grade legal opium, the government has incurred significant costs in order to keep this factory operating. The factory’s profitability has been limited, though, by bureaucratic corruption.
Opium, also known as poppy tears or opium, is a dried latex substance made from the seed capsules of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. The analgesic alkaloid morphine, which makes up about 12% of opium, is chemically converted into heroin and other synthetic opioids for both medical and illegal drug use.
Latex, which contains codeine, thebaine, and non-analgesic alkaloids like papaverine and noscapine, is extracted manually from immature seed pods.
The latex dries and leaks out, leaving behind a sticky yellow residue that needs to be scraped off and dehydrated. Greek word meconium, which means “opium-like,” is used to describe weaker preparations made from different opium poppy parts or from different poppy species.