![]() ![]() Australia was involved in the conflict in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014, and since 2015 has had a non-combat role with the NATO mission, Operation Resolute Support. In 2011 – at the time Cure for pain was created – the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that Afghanistan accounted for around 90% of the world’s opium production. The opium poppy is synonymous with conflict in contemporary Afghanistan, a country renowned for its vast crop. McCoy, by mid-1971 it was estimated that between 10 and 15 per cent of lower-ranking American soldiers were using heroin. In the Australian experience of the First World War, the use and the intermittent availability of morphine at each stage of evacuating the wounded was complex, and as the official history records, “many men died from its misuse, many others sustained great needless pain.” Heroin was also a feature of the Vietnam War (1962–75), during which the Golden Triangle of Burma, Thailand and Laos was a source of fine-grade heroin that was sold directly to American GIs. Courtwright explained, during the American Civil War (1861–65) sick and wounded soldiers were injected with morphine, and then became addicts, while veterans were also given opiates. In a military context, the power of opium to provide pain relief was embraced, but with some dire consequences. The British desire to control the import of opium into China triggered the Opium Wars (1839––60). But in the new context of Cure for pain, the opium poppy is far from a decorative cottage flower, instead bearing a rich military history. So the poppies that are seen in Cure for pain were drawn by eX de Medici from those Canberra gardens. Opium poppies do not make a great cut flower – the stems quickly go limp, and the petals fall off. ![]() It is this sap that is used in the production of opiates, most commonly laudanum, morphine, and heroin. At the centre of the flower is a distinctive, cup-shaped seed pod with a crown that, when cut, oozes a milky, sticky sap. A tall pale green plant with twisting leaves, the opium poppy bears a flower with striking colours, ranging from dark red petals with the inner edge in rich purple, through to pale purple, or candy pink. The flowers are a remnant of wartime cultivation by the then Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Cure for pain draws its title from the opium poppy ( Papaver somniferum), which can be found growing in suburban gardens in inner Canberra.
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