The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia
By Alfred W. McCoy with
Cathleen B. Read
and Leonard P.Adams II
8.
What Can Be Done?
DECISIVE ACTION must be taken to end America's heroin plague.
The half-hearted half measures of the last twenty-five years have done nothing to stop the
rapid spread of heroin addiction and have brought the United States to the brink of a drug
disaster. In 1946 there were an estimated 20,000 heroin addicts: in the entire United
States. Through the diligent efforts of organized crime, the number of addicts mounted
year after year, reaching a new high of 150,000 in 1965. (1) Since 1965 there has been an
unprecedented increase in addiction; statistical experts at the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics
now believe that there are 560,000 hard-core heroin addicts in the United States. (2) [Believe it or not the 2015 numbers are remarkably close to those 50 years prior on the number of addicts in the US DC]
There is almost no town, city, race, social class, or occupational group in the United
States untouched by the heroin problem. Black urban ghettos have been the major target
of heroin pushers since the 1920's, but the addict population in suburban communities is
growing rapidly, and the day is not far off when every large high school in America will
have its own pushers. (3) Instead of taking a coffee break, a growing percentage of
America's assembly line workers are slipping off to the men's room for a heroin fix. (4)
In June 1971 one medical researcher reported that 6.5 percent of fifty thousand workers
tested in the previous two years were heroin addicts. (5) In Vietnam, and on U.S. army
bases around the globe, the GI junkie is becoming as much a part of army life as the
beer guzzling master sergeant and the martini-sipping captain.
Although heroin addicts are outnumbered by alcoholics, heroin addiction has been much
more damaging to the fabric of American society. Alcoholism is usually a private
problem, and the anguish extends no further than the victim, his family, and his friends.
Alcohol is relatively cheap, and even the most down-and-out wino can manage to keep
himself supplied. Heroin, however, is extremely expensive, and most addicts have been
forced to turn to street crime for money to maintain their habits. One 1970 survey
estimated that the average addict in New York State had to steal $8,000 a year for his
habit, and calculated the total property lost to junkies at $580 million a year. (6) Many
urban police departments believe that the majority of petty crimes, such as mugging,
shoplifting, and burglary are committed by addicts in search of money. Predatory addicts
have turned large sections of America's inner cities into hazardous jungles, where only
well-armed police dare to venture after dark. To a large extent, the problem of crime in
the streets is a heroin problem, and most of the petty violence that has aroused so much
public apprehension would disappear overnight if the drug traffic were brought under
control.
Obviously, something must be done, and done quickly, to deal with the heroin problem.
Any attempt to eliminate the drug traffic will probably have to use one of three strategies:
(1) cure the individual addicts; (2) smash international and domestic narcotics syndicates;
or (3) eliminate illicit opium production. Since it is extremely difficult to cure individual
addicts without solving the larger social problems and almost impossible to crush the
criminal syndicates, the only realistic solution is to eradicate illicit opium production.
1972: The Year of Decision
Once it is admitted that it will require enormous diplomatic pressure to force the
governments of Thailand, Laos, and South Vietnam out of the opium business, the
question arises, what is the best way to apply pressure? The Nixon administration claims
that it is using the full range o America's political and economic influence, the so called
other means of persuasion, to force Southeast Asian governments to quit the traffic. (12)
Unfortunately, there is not the slightest shred of evidence to indicate that there has been
any substantial American pressure on these governments to clean up the traffic. Most
American officials serving in Southeast Asia are not particularly interested in using their
personal power or influence to do anything about the drug traffic. They are there to earn
money, kill Communists, or climb a few notches higher on some bureaucratic ladder.
Their response to the drug problem has ranged from apathy to embarrassment. Moreover,
a number of American officials and agencies are guilty of various levels of complicity in
the narcotics traffic: at the lower level, most American officials have made no effort to
stem the drug traffic even when they have had the opportunity; American embassies in
Vientiane and Saigon glossed over reports of the involvement of high-level traffickers;
and finally, the CIA's charter airline, Air America, has been involved in the transport of
opium and heroin. Many of the government leaders who have become the cornerstone of
American prestige and influence in Indochina are the very people who would have to be
purged in an effective anti-narcotics drive. In short, the American presence in Southeast
Asia is not part of the solution, it is part of the problem.
If America's lavish foreign aid and military assistance programs cannot be used positively
to force the governments of Laos, Thailand, and South Vietnam to get out of the opium
business, then logic would seem to dictate that an immediate cessation of foreign aid
might bring about the desired results. While U.S. bureaucrats, secret agents, and military
officers serving in Southeast Asia are indifferent to the will of the people, Congress is
extremely sensitive to popular pressure and has the constitutional and legal authority to
cut off foreign aid to these countries. A cutoff in foreign aid and military assistance might
finally convince these governments that the United States is really serious about ending
the heroin traffic.
To be thoroughly effective, the cessation of foreign aid should continue for four or five
years, until there is clear-cut evidence that the narcotics traffic has been completely
eradicated in each of these three countries. The aid money could be divided between drug
treatment programs in the United States and international law enforcement efforts. Some
of the money might be turned over to the United Nations to finance special opium
eradication programs or law enforcement campaigns in Burma, Thailand, Laos, and
Vietnam. Rather than letting biased American agencies determine when the traffic has
been eliminated and aid payments should be resumed, the United States should rely on
the judgment of a more neutral international observer such as the U.N.'s Commission on
Narcotic Drugs.
There is every reason to believe that 1972 is shaping up as the year of decision for the
international narcotics traffic. This is the year when American voters will make their
decision on the political future of Indochina. If President Nixon is reelected he will
probably continue his policy of giving unqualified support to President Thieu's
administration in South Vietnam and to the right-wing governments in Thailand and
Laos. As long as there is no serious threat of a cutoff in foreign aid or a withdrawal of
political support, these governments cannot be subjected to any serious pressure and the
narcotics traffic will continue unabated. In late 1972 the Turkish government's opium
eradication program will eliminate that nation's last poppy fields, and the international
narcotics syndicates will have to complete their shift to Southeast Asia. (13)Although
much of America's heroin supply has been coming from the Golden Triangle region since
the late 1960's, the great majority of it will start coming from Southeast Asia by late 1972
or early 1973.
Thus, through a curious historical coincidence, 1972 is a turning point for both the
international heroin traffic and the corrupt governments of Southeast Asia; 1972 will
probably be remembered as a crossroads in the history of America's war on narcotics. If
aid is cut off and money made available through the United Nations for a systematic
opium suppression campaign, then these governments might begin to change their
tolerant attitudes toward the heroin traffic. If not, the Golden Triangle is capable of
supplying an almost unlimited amount of opium, and America will have to endure the
curse of heroin for another generation. Admittedly, an immediate, long-term cessation of
military and economic aid to Laos, Thailand, and South Vietnam will probably weaken
America's political influence in the region and bring neutralist or Communist
governments to power. Indeed, in the final analysis the American people will have to
choose between supporting doggedly anti-Communist governments in Southeast Asia or
getting heroin out of their high schools.
APPENDIX
China:
The Historical Setting of
Asia's Profitable Plague
By LEONARD P. ADAMS
I wish to thank the following for their help: first and foremost, Nina S. Adams; Leonard and Elizabeth
Adams, David Buxbaum, Roger DesForges, Anne Everett, Jayne Werner Freeman, Fred Coss, John Hall,
Stephen Headley, Mark Selden, Bernard and Nettie Shapiro, and Jonathan Spence. I am also grateful to the
staffs of the following institutions: in London, the Public Record Office, the India Office Library, the
London Missionary Society Library, and Mr. John Williamson of the Karl Marx Memorial Library; in
Paris, the Archives d'Outre-mer and Miss Annick Levy of the Centre du Documentation sur I'Asie du Sudest
et le Monde Indonesien.-L.P.A.
ASIAN TRADE during the early nineteenth century was a picturesque affair. As Britain
built her great eastern empire, the India-China route developed as the hub of commercial
activity. Enterprising Europeans ran swift clipper ships to colorful Chinese ports, where
cargo was often transferred to smaller boats, including: "scrambling crabs," built for
speed, that bristled with dozens of long oars. Yet the romantic image of the China trade is
marred by some unpleasant realities: the crucial commodity shipped from colonial India
to China was opium, and fast Chinese boats were needed because China's imperial
government prohibited the importation and use of the drug.
Britain, the Great Provider
By the late eighteenth century, opium had been used in much of Asia for several
centuries. The drug had been taken as a medicine in China since Arab traders brought it
from the Middle East in the seventh or eighth century A.D. Spaniards introduced the
habit of smoking tobacco to the Philippines, and it spread from there to China about
1620. (1) The Dutch in Formosa smoked a mixture of opium and tobacco to combat the
effects of malaria, and a small number of Chinese acquired this habit as Well. (2)
Gradually, some of those who smoked omitted the tobacco from this narcotic blend and
changed to opium, most of which was imported from India by Portuguese traders. The
reasons for opium smoking varied considerably: for the rich it was primarily a luxury, a
social grace, while the poor sought in it a temporary escape from their condition.
Although small amounts of opium were harvested in many parts of Asia, India was the
chief producer of the drug for international trading. During the Mogul era, a number of
her rulers attempted to tax opium sales for government profit. (3) But as of the 1770's no
single government possessed the will, the organization, or the political and naval power
to foster new markets and to internationalize the Asian drug trade on a large scale.
Britain's move to colonize India changed this situation dramatically. In 1772 Warren
Hastings was appointed governor of the recently conquered territory of Bengal and faced
the task of finding a dependable source of tax revenue. Given the Mogul precedent, he
proceeded to sell the concession that granted the buyer the exclusive rights to oversee
opium production, buy the harvest, and deliver the product to the British opium factory at
the port of Calcutta, where it was auctioned off to wholesale merchants for export. (4)
The drug, Hastings piously declared, was not a consumer necessity "but a pernicious
article of luxury, which ought not to be permitted but for purposes of foreign commerce
only. (5) And so it was. The British in India not only permitted but encouraged foreign
sales of opium. (6) The Indian opium concession, which later became a directly
administered government monopoly, brought the government over half a million pounds
sterling during Hastings' term in India alone.(7) Opium exports, primarily to China,
provided roughly one-seventh of the total revenue for British India. (8) British officials
and others objected to the trade, largely on moral grounds. But for policy makers from
Hastings' era to the early part of the twentieth century, the morally questionable nature of
the traffic was outweighed by the enormous profits it yielded.
In this early period, competition for British-supervised opium, variously known as
Bengal, Benares, or Patna, came mainly from Malwa opium, which was grown in central
and northwestern Indian states not under direct British rule. But during the early
nineteenth century the colonial government gained control over most of the routes and
ports used for shipping Malwa opium. This gave them the power to tax and thus regulate
Malwa exports. The British also increased the production of Bengal opium, attempting
both to undercut competition from Malwa and to take advantage of the rising demand in
China. (9)
British officials justified this increased production with arguments whose tone would be
echoed by many subsequent rationalizations of Britain's role in the trade. As one of
Hastings' successors noted, the policy of increasing Bengal production to the limits of the
market would mean a reduction in the profit per unit of opium sold, but it will not tend to
increase the consumption of the deleterious Drug nor to extend its baneful effects in
Society. "The sole and exclusive object of it is to secure to ourselves the whole supply by
preventing Foreigners from participating in a trade of which at present they enjoy no
inconsiderable share-for it is evident that the Chinese, as well as the Malays, cannot exist
without the use of Opium, and if we do not supply their necessary wants, Foreigners
will." (10)
The "foreign" threat to British hegemony in the opium trade soon became more imagined
than real. Portuguese traders dealing in Malwa opium were rapidly outclassed. The
American role in the China opium trade was never very great, although those involved
often made substantial fortunes. For a time Americans monopolized the shipment of
Turkish opium to China, but the cost of transport made serious competition
impossible.(11)
Opium not only became a bulwark of the tax base of colonial India, during much of the
nineteenth century it served as the economic pivot around which the whole China trade
revolved. Prior to about 1800 the British traded mainly their own and Indian goods,
especially raw cotton, for Chinese tea and silk. But the relative self-sufficiency of China's
economy, which perennially frustrated foreign traders, meant that China sold more than
she bought, and Western merchants were forced to bring silver to China to make up the
balance. After about 1800 the British increasingly substituted another currency: Indian
opium. (12) The Chinese paid for opium in silver at the port of entry. Merchants then
exchanged this silver for Chinese goods to be sold elsewhere in Asia or in Europe. Opium
shifted the balance of the China trade: the situation became economically as well as
socially unfavorable to the Chinese.
Although the British gave the opium traffic their official blessing, the Chinese did not.
Opium smoking was prohibited in 1729; smoking, cultivation, and importation of opium
were specifically banned in 1800. (13) But by the beginning of the nineteenth century the
once powerful Ching dynasty had been seriously weakened politically and financially by
official corruption and domestic rebellion. As the century wore on, China's internal
problems were aggravated by Western attempts to force open the country for trade and,
later, for industrial development. Opium speeded up the decay, for Chinese officials and
soldiers, underpaid, discontented and often idle, were among the first to take up opium
smoking, weakening their government still further.
The edict of 1800 closed Canton, the only port at which foreigners were then officially
allowed to trade, to opium. But this ban, like most later defensive gestures, merely helped
move the opium traffic beyond the area where it might have been supervised, however
ineffectively. The market near Canton rapidly became glutted, and with the connivance of
corrupt officials and merchants, drug sales by Europeans spread along China's southeast
coast beyond government control. Many of the Chinese pirate gangs involved in opium
smuggling on the coast and inland were organized as secret societies. (14) The link
between opium, Chinese criminals, and secret societies, whose traditional role of political
resistance made them perennially outlawed and feared by the central government, only
strengthened the official revulsion toward foreigners and their "moral poison."
From 1811 to 1821 imports of both Bengal and Malwa opium averaged over 340 tons a
year. (15) In the late 1820's and 1830's, because of the ease with which opium could be
smuggled and the profits involved, the flow of opium became a flood. During the period
from 1829 to 1839, annual imports from India averaged 3,683,542 pounds, or more than
1,841 tons, almost six times the average for the period 1811 to 1821. (16) British opium
policy in India was the primary cause of this expansion. By the mid 1830's the British had
acquired tax control over most of the trade routes used for shipping Malwa opium. But a
decrease in the tax rate on Malwa, combined with a conscious effort to expand Bengal
cultivation, increased the supply of opium tremendously. Also, there were now more
foreign merchants to import the drug. (17)
The spectacular amount of opium entering China, the emperor's decision to-take a strong
stand against it, and British demands for free trade and diplomatic equality resulted in the
Opium War of 1839-1842. Although the British resented the term "opium war," it seemed
altogether appropriate to the defeated Chinese. Opium not only provoked the war, it
helped China lose it, although given Britain's firepower the outcome was never in doubt.
During one battle, for example, an officer named Chang, who was in charge of important
reserves, took time off to satisfy his craving for opium. The man smoked his pipe from
dawn to dusk and finally, when his aides were still debating whether to advance or
retreat, "the sound of cannon and musketry-fire drew closer and closer. Panic seized his
troops and with one accord they fled. . . . Chang himself was still puffing away at his
opium pipe. At last he staggered into a litter and was carried away." (18) A little less than
one third of the 21 million dollar indemnity extracted by the victors was payment for the
opium that the imperial commissioner, Lin Tse-hsu, had seized and destroyed at the
beginning of the war. The British also won concessions to their principle of free trade, a
principle upheld in practical terms largely for the sake of a monopoly-produced, illicitly
sold narcotic.
source and notes
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