The usage of the opium poppy for pain tolerance and its general euphoric effects has probably been around since the consciousness of mankind was first formed. Even though, the opium poppy is still cultivated and used today legally through pharmaceutical companies that produce opiate drugs such as oxycodone or vicodin or hydrocodone or codeine as well as methadone or morphine or similar, the opium poppy and its derivatives are for the most part demonized by the United States Federal government as a Schedule II narcotic which is regulated by the government. This means in a nutshell that the usage of opiates is managed and controlled by the US Government in conjunction with medical authorities so that any abuse of the above products is subject to penalties, civil fines, and/or criminal prosecution. As for heroin this is considered to be a schedule I narcotic and is illegal in any of its forms in the United States with significant penalties associated with its illicit usage.
The hypocrisy of the United States can be essentially demonstrated by the fact that the opium poppy is fine to be utilized as an appropriate medicine if it has been prescribed to you by a medical authority, but if on the other hand, you should try to utilize the opium poppy yourself, without prescription, you are in essence, a criminal, even if there may be mitigating circumstances for your usage of opium. The basic reason why this is hypocrisy is the sheer quantity of Americans that are prescribed opiates in the first place, as reported by abcnews.com in 2011: "The United States makes up only 4.6 percent of the world's population, but consumes 80 percent of its opioids." What this really tells us, is that opioid prescriptions in America are undoubtedly overprescribed, abused, and are readily available to certain segments of the population for specious reasons, and ultimately profit for the pharmaceutical companies. While it is certainly true that opioid prescriptions are necessary and of immense value to patients as a whole, the corollary is also true that deceitful patients do take advantage of their ability to receive access to the opioids whereas others on the outside are essentially heavily penalized for their apparent inability to "game" the system and thereby suffer the consequences of that failure.
It appears that when it comes to the opium poppy in the United States, that governmental authorities recognize the importance and strength that opioids provide to the population for pain control, pain relief, and general blissfulness, so consequently legal opioids are both heavily marketed as well as distributed in America through approved governmental sanctioned regulations. Additionally, pharmaceutical companies recognize the great profit that they can make from the selling of these drugs, to which IMS Health estimated that:”In 2011, U.S. sales of prescription painkillers amounted to $9 billion." All of this essentially means that while on the one hand, the United States spends a considerable amount of money attempting to eradicate, interdict, and to destroy the opium poppy in countries all around the world, on the other hand, it maintains its own opium poppy distribution chain in order to synthesize the chemicals necessary to create derivatives from the poppy that ultimately produces the painkilling prescription pills that its denizens consume at record levels.
So it would appear that as long as our government, its agencies, and its multi-national pharmaceutical companies make their coin, and unauthorized countries and individuals do not, that we have paid proper homage to "the business of America is business."