Furthermore, the provisions of the Single Convention regarding the national supply and demand of opium to make morphine contribute to the global shortage of essential poppy-based pain relief medicines. According to the convention, governments can only request raw poppy materials according to the amount of poppy-based medicines used in the two preceding years. Consequently, in countries where underprescription is chronic due to the high prices of morphine and lack of availability and medical training in the prescription of poppy-based drugs, it is impossible to demand enough raw poppy materials from the INCB, as the convention's regulating body, to meet the country's pain relief needs. As such, 77% of the world's poppy-based medicine supplies are used by only six countries (See: Fischer, B J. Rehm, and T Culbert, "Opium based medicines: a mapping of global supply, demand and needs" in