In his June 1971
statement to Congress on the drug crisis, President Nixon said, "It is clear
that the only really effective way to end heroin production is to end opium
production and the growing of poppies." (9)
Of all the possible solutions to the
problem, this is the only one with any chance of success. And in many ways it is
an ideal solution. While clandestine heroin production is hidden by impenetrable
layers of corruption and secrecy, illicit poppy production is relatively easy to
detect. Opium farmers make no attempt to conceal their crops, and the location
of poppy fields is usually known to local government officials. (Even if the
farmers did try to hide their fields, the brightly colored poppy flowers stand
out clearly in high-altitude aerial photographs.) Heroin chemists are constantly
changing the location of their laboratories, but opium farmers usually work the
same fields for up to twenty years.
Moreover, the opium farmer is the only person in the chain of processing, smuggling, and distribution who does not share in the enormous profits. A kilo of heroin that sells for $225,000 on the streets of New York City is refined from only $500 worth of opium. While heroin traffickers reap enormous rewards from only a few hours of work, the struggling opium farmers are paid very little for the hundreds of hours of backbreaking labor they devote to cultivating and harvesting raw opium. Opium farmers could be bought off at a price we can well afford to pay. If the United States were willing to pay farmers the going price of $50 a kilo not to grow opium, Southeast Asia's entire annual harvest of one thousand tons (70 percent of the world's total illicit opium supply) could be eliminated for only $50 million. Considering that addicts in New York City steal approximately $580 million annually to maintain their habits, we can hardly afford not to take advantage of this bargain.
Once the opium farmers are pensioned off, illicit opium production will disappear, heroin laboratories will close for want of raw materials, and America's pushers will gradually be forced out of business. Methadone centers and treatment clinics could be opened to detoxify the remaining addicts, and within a few years the heroin problem would become little more than a painful memory. (10)
Unfortunately, it is not going to be that easy to pay off the opium farmers. Although the farmers themselves may be happy to participate in such a profitable opium eradication program, their governments do not share this enthusiasm. For political leaders in Thailand, Laos and South Vietnam the opium traffic is a lucrative source of income, and they would hardly welcome a serious antinarcotics campaign that tried to eliminate poppy production or drive the syndicates out of business. In a classified report dated February 21, 1972, an interagency investigative committee with high-level representatives from both the CIA and the State Department reported that "there is no prospect" of curbing the heroin traffic in Southeast Asia "under any conditions that can realistically be projected." The committee explained that "the most basic problem, and the one that unfortunately appears least likely of any early solution, is the corruption, collusion and indifference at some places in some governments, particularly Thailand and South Vietnam, that precludes more effective suppression of traffic by the governments on whose territory it takes place. (11) Thus, a number of serious political problems would have to be resolved before such a program could be put into action.
The Thai government is heavily implicated in the opium traffic. Every important trafficker in Thailand has an "adviser" in the narcotics police, and most would never think of moving a major drug shipment without first checking with the police to make sure that there is no possibility of seizure or arrest. U.S. narcotics agents serving in Thailand have learned that any information they give the Thai police force is turned over to the syndicates within a matter of hours. Moreover, officials in the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics feel that corruption is not just a matter of individual wrongdoing, and claim to have evidence that indicates that corruption goes to the very top of Thailand's current military government.
In South Vietnam almost every powerful political leader is somewhat implicated in the sale of heroin to American soldiers, and many are working closely with Corsican syndicates to ship large quantities of narcotics to the United States and Europe.
The Laotian elite are actively involved in the manufacture and export of heroin, and resident Corsican smugglers are treated like honored foreign dignitaries.
While the Burmese government has almost no control over the Shan States' opium traffic, the Thai and Laotian governments are in a position to prevent Burmese opium from reaching the international markets. By simply sealing off their frontiers and denying the KMT and Shan caravans access to their northern borderlands, the Thai and Laotian governments could cut most of Burma's opium exports. Once the Shan rebels and bandits, who finance their military operations from the traffic, are forced out of business, some semblance of order would return to the Shan States, and the Burmese government could begin the task of eradicating poppy cultivation.
Obviously, the Thai, Laotian, and Vietnamese governments are not going to get out of the narcotics traffic of their own free will. It is going to require enormous political pressure from the United States before these governments will agree to purge all of their corrupt officials involved in the narcotics trade and begin to take positive steps to elimina e the production, processing, and export of opiates.