The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia

The Consequences of Complicity:
A Generation of Junkies

In the face of the twin horrors of the Vietnam drug problem-the heroin epidemic among GIs and the growing exports to the United Stateswhat has been the response from American diplomatic and military officials in Vietnam? On the whole, their reaction has been a combination of embarrassment and apathy. Embarrassment, because they are all aware to some degree, even though they will not admit it, that elements of the Vietnamese government they have been praising and defending all these years are pushing heroin to American GIs Apathy because most of them feel that anybody who uses heroin deserves what he gets. Almost all U.S. officials knit their brows, cluck their tongues, and try to look very, very concerned whenever the heroin problem is mentioned, but most simply could not care less. They are in Vietnam to beat the VC, smash the Communists, and defend Democracy; the fact that some of Democracy's proteges are pushing heroin is something they would rather not think about.

In the early years of the Diem administration, American pronouncements about its goals in Vietnam had an almost naively innocent quality about them. President Diem was seen as a middle path of virtuous democracy between the Viet Minh's brutal "Communist dictatorship" on the left and the corrupt, dopedealing Binh Xuyen pirates on the right. When Diem refused to fire his corrupt brother, who had revived the endemic corruption so characteristic of the Binh Xuyen, the U.S. mission helped engineer Diem's downfall in the hope that an honest, efficient government would emerge from the confusion. But as Vietnam's politics proceeded to plunge into chaos and Saigon's security reached the critical level, the U.S. mission saw the light and prayed for the return of another "strong man."

The answer to the American prayer was the Thieu-Ky administration. Although Thieu and Ky devoted too much of their time to fighting each other, the Americans have generally been pleased with their ability to govern with a firm, if despotic, hand. Having learned that this type of heavy-handed government is the only kind compatible with American interests, U.S. officials were hardly going to protest when the close associates of both leaders were involved in systematic corruption, including the narcotics traffic. As long as the narcotics traffic was directed exclusively at Chinese and Vietnamese opium smokers, U.S. congressional complaints about corruption were muted. When in 1968 Senator Albert Gruening accused Air Vice-Marshal Ky of smuggling opium, the U.S. Embassy in Saigon issued a firm, if inaccurate, denial, and the matter was forgotten. (228)But when South Vietnam's narcotics syndicates started cultivating the GI heroin market, the problem was not dismissed so cavalierly. After NBC's Saigon correspondent accused President Thieu's chief adviser, General Quang, of being "the biggest pusher" of heroin to GIs in Vietnam (229) the U.S. Embassy "filed a top level report to Washington saying it can find no evidence to support recent charges that President Nguyen Van Thieu and Vice-President Nguyen Cao Ky were involved in or profiting from the drug trade." Simultaneously, U.S. officials defended Thieu and Ky publicly by leaking the Embassy report to members of the Saigon press corps in an offthe-record background briefing. (230)

According to a U.S. Embassy official assigned to the drug problem, the U.S. mission "can find no evidence" because it studiously avoids looking for any. It is an unwritten rule among Embassy officials that nobody can mention the names of high-ranking Vietnamese during discussions of the heroin traffic. The CIA avoids gathering information on high-level involvement, and even in its closed-door sessions with high Embassy officials discusses only minor pushers and addicts.

The U.S. mission's handling of the accusations concerning Gen. Ngo Dzu's involvement in the heroin trade is another case in point. Beginning in January 1971, the U.S. army's Criminal Investigation Division (CID) began gathering detailed information on Gen. Ngo Dzu's involvement in GI heroin traffic. Although these reports were sent to the U.S. Embassy through the proper channels, the U.S. mission did absolutely nothing. (231) When U.S. Congressman Robert H. Steele told a congressional subcommittee in July 1971 that "U.S. military authorities have provided Ambassador Bunker with hard intelligence that one of the chief traffickers is Gen. Ngo Dzu, the commander of 11 Corps, (232) the U.S. mission did its best to discredit the Congressman. Rather than criticizing Gen. Ngo Dzu for pushing heroin, the senior U.S. adviser for 11 Corps declared publicly, "There is no information available to me that in any shape, manner or fashion would substantiate the charges Congressman Steele has made." (233) In light of the CID report quoted earlier, the U.S. mission has apparently decided to use any means possible to protect the Thieu regime from investigation of its involvement in the heroin trade.

While the U.S. Embassy has done its best to shield the Thieu regime from criticism, the Nixon administration and the U.S. military command have tried to defuse public concern over the GI heroin epidemic by minimizing the extent of the problem. The military offers two main arguments to justify its official optimism: (1) the definitive urinalysis test administered to every Vietnam GI just before he returns to the United States has shown that no more than 5.5 percent of all army personnel in Vietnam are heroin users; (2) since only 8.0 percent of the GI addicts in Vietnam inject, or "mainline," the great majority who smoke or snort heroin are not seriously addicted and will have no problern kicking the habit once they return home. (234)

Unfortunately, the army's first supposition is not true. On June 22, 1971, the U.S. military command ordered every GI leaving Vietnam to submit to a sophisticated test that can detect significant amounts of morphine in the body. Any GI who tested positively was confined to a special detoxification center and could not be allowed to return home until he had "dried out" and could pass the test. From the very first, GIs started devising ingenious ways of belting the system. Supervision of the testing centers has been notoriously lax, and many serious addicts pass by bringing a buddy's "clean" urine to the test and substituting it for their own. (235) Since the urinalysis can only detect morphine in the body if the addict has used heroin within the last four or five days, many addicts dry themselves out voluntarily before taking the test. (236) Army nurses have seen addicts who are in the midst of an agonizing withdrawal pass the test. (237) Contrary to popular myth, addicts can control their intake to some extent, and often alternate "sprees" with brief periods of abstinence lasting up to a week, especially the last few days before payday. (238)

Almost every American soldier in Vietnam knows the exact date of his scheduled return to the "world," and most keep a running countdown, which often includes hours and minutes as the time gets shorter. Every GI's DEROS (Date of Expected Return from Overseas) has an historic, even religious quality about it, and the thought of having to stay an extra week, or even a few days more is absolutely intolerable. Most GI addicts accept the pain of voluntary withdrawal in order to pass the test and get on their scheduled flight. Those who are too weak to make it on their own volunteer for the base "amnesty" program.

Many army physicians report a disproportionately high percentage of patients with only a few weeks left in their tours. (239) When one GI was asked why he and his buddies had temporarily given up heroin, he replied, "The magic word, the absolute magic word, is DEROS." (240) The short, painful detoxification simply flushes the morphine out of the system but in no way ends the deep psychological craving for heroin. When these men return home they are still "addicts" in every sense of the word.

The army's suggestion that addicts who smoke heroin in Vietnam are somehow less addicted than those who "mainline" back in the United States is patently absurd. While it is true that injection is more potent than smoking, Vietnamese heroin is so pure (90 to 98 percent pure compared to 2 to 10 percent pure in the United States) that smoking one vial of Vietnamese heroin is equivalent to five or six injections of the cut heroin available in the United States. (241) (Almost no Hong Kong addicts "mainline," but that city has the most serious heroin addiction problem in the world.) Most GI addicts in Vietnam have habits that would cost them over two hundred dollars a day back in the United States.

The army makes its absurd claim because it is not willing to admit the catastrophic impact of GI addiction in Vietnam on the worsening heroin crisis back in the United States. Despite President Nixon's promise that "all our servicemen must be accorded the right to rehabilitation," the U.S. military command in Vietnam is discharging between one thousand and two thousand GI addicts a month. These are men who are declar d of negligible value to the United States Army" after failing the urinalysis test twice. Although every GI in Vietnam has been guaranteed the right to declare himself an addict and volunteer for treatment, the army's generosity does not often extend to two-time losers. Once a commanding officer decides that a two-time loser is a hopeless case, the GI addict is flown back to the United States and discharged almost immediately Y. (242)

Virtually none of these addicts are given any follow-up treatme t. In August 1971 the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Public Health, Rep. Paul Rogers, declared that "Veterans Administration hospitals have handled only three referrals out of 12,000 servicemen on heroin . . . in Vietnam. " (243) Left to fend for themselves, many of these men are returning to their home towns as confirmed addicts and potential pushers. A large percentage of the returning veterans are middle Americans from communities that have always been completely free from heroin addiction and regarded it as a problem unique to the black ghetto. Organized crime had never established a foothold in white middle-class communities, and most law enforcement experts considered them immune to heroin. When GI addicts started coming home to middle America, however, drug experts were frightened that they might be carriers of the heroin plague. In June 1971 one specialist said, "Each addict makes at least four more. He cannot bear his habit alone and is sure to seek recruits even if he is not himself the pusher. This is the emergency we now face. (244)

In Vietnam heroin use is so commonplace among GIs that the traditional middle-class American taboo toward the drug has been broken. A U.S. army survey administered to 1,000 army returnees in March 1971 showed that while only I I percent had used heroin regularly in Vietnam, 22 percent had tried it at least once. (245) For these men heroin is just another narcotic like marijuana, pep pills, or alcohol. In Vietnam soldiers handle heroin so frequently-buying it for themselves, picking up some for a buddy on duty, or selling it for profit-that the idea of pushing heroin once they get home seems natural. "I heard from a few guys who got off it," said one twenty-two-year-old middle American at the Long Binh treatment center. "They said they were still off 'cause it was too expensive, and anyway, they were scared to use the needle. But they said they wanted me to send 'em some scag [heroin] so they could sell it and make some money. You know a jug [vial] over here only costs two dollars, but you can get a hundred dollars for it back in the world." (246) Traveling through Asia on an investigative tour, U.S. Congressman John M. Murphy found "numerous examples of the slick GI who gets discharged, goes home, then comes back to set himself up in the drug traffic." (247)

According to U.S. narcotics agents, one of the more important heroin exporters in Thailand was an ex-serviceman, William Henry Jackson, who managed the Five Star Bar in Bangkok, a hangout for black GIs. Working with other ex-servicemen, Jackson recruited activeduty soldiers going home as couriers and used local GIs "to ship heroin to the United States through the army and air force postal system. (248)One U.S. agent who has arrested several of these ex-GI drug dealers says that, "Most of these guys say to themselves, 'Just as soon as I get $100,000 for a gas station, home, boat, and car in California I'm going to quit.' Most of them are just regular guys." On April 5, 1971, U.S. customs officials in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, seized 7.7 kilos of Double U-0 Globe brand heroin in a package mailed from Bangkok, Thailand, through the U.S. military postal system. (249) It had a retail value estimated at $1.75 million. During March and April 1971 U.S. customs seized 248 pieces of mail containing narcotics in the army and air force postal systems. (250)

As the number of American troops in Vietnam rapidly dwindles, there will be a natural tendency to forget the whole nightmarish experience of the Vietnam heroin epidemic. In time the Nixon administration may even claim the end of the GI heroin problem as one of the more solid accomplishments of its Vietnamization program. Despite these fervent hopes, it will probably be a long time before the memory of the Vietnam heroin epidemic can take its richly deserved place in the garbage can of history. For returning GI addicts have come home as carriers of the disease and are afflicting hundreds of communities with the heroin virus. The Golden Triangle heroin laboratories, which had been supplying American soldiers in Vietnam since late 1969, are not going out of business. When the number of GIs in Vietnam declined drastically in 1971, Corsican and Chinese syndicates started shipping Laotian heroin directly to the United States. In April 1971 the Laotian Ambassador to France was apprehended in Paris with sixty kilos of Double U-0 Globe brand heroin destined for the United States. (251) On November 11, 1971, a Filipino diplomat and a Bangkok Chinese merchant were arrested at the Lexington Hotel in New York City with 15.5 kilos of Double U-0 Globe brand shortly after they arrived from Vientiane. (252) Heroin is following the GIs home.

World War I produced a "lost generation" of writers, poets, and artists. World War II gave us a generation of collegians and suburbanites. The Vietnam War seems to be fathering a generation of junkies.