Glynn Williams, a fifth-generation Australian farmer, is feeling the impact of a public health crisis unfolding 8,000 miles away. His family plants potatoes and raises cattle on Tasmania's wind-swept northwest. Williams, 48, also grows poppies, the plant that produces the raw opiate in prescription drugs like oxycodone, which are blamed for an epidemic of overdose deaths in the U.S. With the U.S. imposing stricter rules on the use of painkillers, demand for the raw material has tumbled. Poppy growers in Tasmania have responded by scaling back or giving up on the crop altogether. The state is the source of about half of global supply, thanks to a 1971 agreement with the Commonwealth of Australia that granted it a decades-long monopoly on poppy cultivation.
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