The world's largest illicit OPIUM-growing area is the Golden Triangle region in Southeast Asia of some 150,000 square miles (388,500 sq km). The Golden Triangle extends from the Chin hills in the west of Myanmar (formerly Burma), north into China's Yunnan province, east into Laos and Thailand's northern provinces, and south into the Kayah state of Myanmar. It encompasses all the Shan state in Myanmar and supplied some 35 percent of the HEROIN used in the United States between the 1960s and early 1990s. Between 1990 and 1999, however, changes in heroin trafficking greatly reduced the importation of heroin from Southeast Asia. In 1990, Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos supplied about 56 percent of the heroin consumed in the United States. By 1999, Latin America supplied most of the heroin to the United States, accounting for 82 percent of the heroin seized in the U.S. The Southeast Asian opium crop, which was on the rise in the early 1990s, suffered a sharp decline due to adverse weather in the later 1990s.
The United States Government has supplied millions of dollars to Myanmar and Thailand in an effort to reduce OPIUM-POPPY (Papaver somniferum) cultivation and interdict heroin destined for the United States. As they have done for years, disenfranchised tribal people cultivate opium as a medicinal and cultural product, as a cash crop to buy food and supplies and improve living conditions, and as a means to procure weapons. Political events in Southeast Asia are complex and are changing constantly. The U.S. government has managed a limited success in helping to reduce opium cultivation in Laos and Thailand; it is anxious over the increased production in Myanmar and the increasing flow of heroin exiting that country via China to Hong Kong, through Rangoon toward Malaysia and Singapore, and through India and Bangladesh.
THE OPIUM SUPPLY
The Golden Triangle had favorable weather in the early 1990s, which resulted in record opium crops. By far the largest producer is Myanmar, which until 1988 had attempted to reduce illicit opium production, strike at illicit refineries, and interdict shipments of illicit drugs. In 1988, however, the military government shifted its police and military away from drug-control efforts, to suppress domestic political opponents. This policy did not shift during the 1990s, despite constant efforts by the United States to have Myanmar take more effective antidrug actions. Myanmar produces over 50 percent of the world's opium.
Laos, isolated and largely ignored by the West since 1975 when the Communist Pathet Lao seized power, cultivated opium in its nine northern provincesbout 20 percent of Myanmar's production. Partly because of the 1990 collapse of the Soviet Union, Laos's principal trading partner and ally, the Laotian government has entered into a number of cooperative agreements with Western nations. Opium production decreased by 16 percent from 1998 to 1999, due mostly to severe weather. However, Laos still accounted for 11 percent of the production in the region.
Thailand is more important as a TRANSIT COUNTRY for Myanmar's opium and heroin. Thailand's already marginal production dropped 38 per cent in 1999, accounting for less than one percent of Southeast Asia's potential production. A traditional producer of opium since the mid-1800s and a net importer of heroin, Thailand's opium is grown in the northern highlands by nomadic hill tribes who are not tied to Thailand culturally, religiously, or politically. Opium cultivation in Thailand remains illegal, so the government has sponsored both eradication and crop-substitution efforts in the north.
China has become a major narcotics transit point because of its open border with Myanmar, its location adjacent to the Golden Triangle, and its excellent transportation and communication links with the trade ports of Hong Kong and Macao. Much of the heroin processed from opium by the Kokang Chinese in the Golden Triangle transits through Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guangdong provinces by road to Hong Kong for overseas distribution.
CULTIVATION CONDITIONS
A number of factors have contributed to the thriving opium economy of the Golden Trianglend the complex politics surrounding and sustaining it. First, the topographical and climatic conditions are ideal for opium cultivation. The demographic conditions also provide a division of labor conducive to an economic system rooted in drug cultivation, processing, and trafficking. The area under cultivation is largely mountainous, ranging from about 5,000 feet (1,500 m) to more than 9,850 feet (3,000 m), with four major river systems supporting the transportation networks and any ongoing economic-development efforts. The remote harsh terrain has fostered great efforts to topple the central governments and to capitalize on the economic opportunities offered by the opium trade.
Second, the ethnography of the region is complex. The region is inhabited by a multitude of ethnic groups, possessing a diversity that defies simple classification. Burman, Shan, Kachin, Thai, and Yunnanese are broad categories that contain widely varied ethnic subgroups. At least twenty-five mutually unintelligible dialects are spoken among the Kachin people. Moreover, there are numerous other groups who do not belong to the larger ethnic divisionuch as Ahka, Hmong (Miao), Lisu, Lahu, Karenni, and Wa, to name a few. Most of these groups are nomadicot geographically localized; therefore, little basis exists for territorial political organization. Yet, national boundaries have paid little heed to this fact and have often cut apart ethnic groups, fueling insurgency as the dominant form of politics in the region.
Cultivating opium in the Golden Triangle has been a way of life since the mid-1800s and has represented an important source of income for impoverished, nomadic hill tribes.
(SEE ALSO: Crop Control Policies; Foreign Policy and Drugs; International Drug Supply Systems; Source Countries for Illicit Drugs; Transit Countries for Illicit Drugs)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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WALKER, W. O., III. (1991). Opium and foreign policy. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press.
WIANT, J. A. (1985). Narcotics in the Golden Triangle. The Washington Quarterly (Fall) 125-140.
WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POL-ICY. (2000). National Drug Control Strategy: 2000 Annual Report. Washington, D.C.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE. (1999). International narcotics control strategy report, March 1999. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
JAMES VAN WERT
REVISED BY FREDERICK K. GRITTNER
Source: Encyclopedia of Drugs, Alcohol, and Addictive Behavior, ©2001 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
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