Legal cultivation of opium for medicinal purposes is carried out in India, only in selected areas, under free licensing conditions.
[1] India is one among 12 countries in world where legal cultivation for medical use is permissible within the ambit of United Nations, Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs 1961.
[8] The legalized cultivation and management of produce under strict government control continued in India even post independence.
The NDPS act empowers the Central Government to permit and regulate cultivation of opium poppy for medical and scientific purposes.
Each year the Central Government notifies the selected tracts where such cultivation will be permitted, and the general conditions for eligibility of the licence.
The essential condition for issue of licence is, fulfillment of minimum qualifying yield (MQY) criterion, specified in number of kilograms per hectare.
[10] Officers of Central Bureau of Narcotics measure each field and exercise controls to ensure that no excess cultivation takes place.
Opium is dried and processed at these factories for export and is also used for extraction of various alkaloid products like Codeine phosphate, Thebaine, Morphine sulphate, Noscapine that are sold for pharmaceutical operations.
But manufacturing of drugs such as Crude cocaine, ecgonine and diacetylmorphine (commonly known as heroin) and their salts are illegal and completely prohibited.
[15] The diverted opium finds its way into North West Indian states like Punjab, where it forms an integral component in illegal drug trafficking.
[16] There is a ban on sale and trade of poppy husk (doda chura), a leftover from fields that was widely used in informal drug market in states like Rajasthan from 2015.
If caught then a farmer will lose their license to cultivate poppy and will be booked under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.