James Brown - King Heroin - [1972]

"King Heroin"  [video | lyrics] off his 1972 album There It Is, has got to be one of the least funky tunes he ever wrote, but damn is it powerful. He starts out describing a dream he had, though actually its a poem written by a friend, where he finds himself  in a bar where heroin itself has somehow managed to get up on stage and start talking about its history and power.

"I'm a world of power and all know it's true
Use me once and you'll know it too
I can make a mere schoolboy forget his books
I can make a world-famous beauty neglect her looks
I can make a good man forsake his wife,
Send a greedy man to prison for the rest of his life
I can make a man forsake his country and flag
Make a girl sell her body for a five-dollar bag
Some think my adventure's a joy and a thriller
But I'll put a gun in your hand and make you a killer"

Yea, its depressing shit no doubt, but it somehow made it to #40 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March of 1972! Also, there is a positive element here that he quickly glazes over and really has nothing to do with the rest of the song:

"In cellophane bags I've found my way

To heads of state and children at play

I'm financed in China, ran in Japan

I'm respected in Turkey and I'm legal in Siam"

Not only are poppies "respected" in Turkey, the government actually subsidizes the farming operations, which have been prevalent throughout the countryside for centuries, but only somewhat recently condoned by the national government.  Despite the many efforts of Nixon and the US to intimidate Turkey into criminalizing poppy production throughout the 1970's, while the US was embroiled in the Watergate scandal ('74), a newly elected PM of Turkey took the opportunity to ignore the previous demands of the US and instead, teamed up with the UN to, "set up strict monitoring and diversion controls"* for rural poppy production to ensure the poppies grown in Turkey weren't diverted to the Black Market.

Within five years, the production was up and running and the UN had Turkey on the international list of "traditional producers" so other countries could legally buy their opium for use in medical products. By 1981, even the US was buying 80% of its medicinal opiates from Turkey, and still does, which is a pretty amazing turn around given our previous hard-line stance on the issue.

While inevitably, SOME opium makes it through to nefarious sources, the turn around from Turkey being the number one supplier of illegal opium, to one of the top 2 (next to India) suppliers of medical opium is incredible, and brings hope that similar systems could be setup in Afghanistan where they now face the same issue Turkey did in the 1970's. 

[*]Source