THE NEW OPIUM WAR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R001000160001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 1, 1971
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 20GVMM: 6WfOW0
1 MAY 1.9(1
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by Frank Browning and Banning Garret
R. PRESIDENT, THE. SPECTER OF heroin addic-
tion is haunting nearly every community in
the nation." With. these urgent words, Sen-
ator Vance -Iarthe spoke up on 114arch 2: in
support of a riaglutuoa on drub control bring considered in
the U.S. Senate. Estimating that there are 500,000 heroin
addicts in the U.S., he pointed out that nearly 20 percent
of them are teenagers. The concern of Hartke and others
is not misplaced. Heroin has become the major killer of
young people between IS and 35, outpacing death from
accidents, suicides or cancer. It has also become a major
cause of crime: to sustain their habits, addicts in the U.S.
soend more than $15 million a day, half of-it coming from
the `i5 percent of crime in the cities which they commit and
:Ie annual $2.5 billion worth of goods they steal.
Once safely isolated as part of the destructive funkiness
of the black ghetto, heroin has suddenly spread out into
Middle America, becoming as much a part of'. suburbia as
theSaturday?barbecue: This has gained it the attention it
otherwise never would have had. President Nixon himself
says it is spreading with "pandemic virulence." People are
becoming aware that teenagers are shooting up at lunch-
time in schools and returningto-classrooms to nod the day
away. But what they don't know-and what no one is tell-
ing them-is that neither the volcanic eruption of addiction
in this country nor the crimes it causes would be possible
without the age-old international trade in opium (from
which heroin is derived), or that heroin addiction-like in-
flation, unemployment, and most of the other chaotic forces
in American society today-is directly related to the U.S.
war in Indochina.
The connection between war and opium in Asia is as old
as empire itself. But the relationship has never been so sym-
biotic, so intricate in its networks and so vast in its implica-
tions. Never before has the trail of tragedy been so clearly
marked as in the present phase of U.S. involvement in South-
east Asia. For the international traffic in opium has ex-
panded. in lockstep with the expanding U.S. military pres-
ence there, just as heroin has stalked the same young people
in U.S. high schools who will also be called on to fight that
war. The ironies that have accompanied the war in Vietnam
.
since its onset are more poignant than before. At the very
.moment that public officials are wringing their hands over
the heroin problem, Washington's own Cold War crusade, re-
plete with clandestine activities that would seem far-fetched
even in a spy novel,: continues toplay a ,major role in a
process that has already rerouted the opium traffic from the
Middle East to Southeast Asia and is every day opening new
channels for its shipment to the U.S. At the same tiune the
government starts crash programs to rehabilitate drug users
among its young people, the young soldiers t' Cis sending to
Vietnam are getting hooked and dying of overdoses at the
rate of one, a day. While the President is declaring war on
narcotics and,on crime in the streets, he is widenin the war
in Laos, whose principal product is opium and-. which has
now become the funnel for nearly half the world's supply
of the narcotic, for which the U.S. is the chief consumer.
There would have been a bloodthirsty logic behind the
expansion of the war into Laos if the thrust had been to
seize supply centers of opium the communists were hoard-
ing up to spread like a deadly virus into the free world. But
the communists did not control the opium there: proces-
sing and distribution were already in the hands of the free
world. Who are the principals of this new opium war? The
whose role in getting the U.S. into Viet-
ubiquitous CIA
,
nam is well known but whose pivotal position in the opium
trade is not; and a rogue's gallery of organizations and STATOTHR
people-from an opium army subsidized by the Nationalist
Chinese to. such familiar names as Madame Nhu and Vice STATOTHR
President Nguyen Cao Ky-who are the creations of U.S.
policy in that part of the world. STATOTHR
The story of opium in Southeast Asia is a strange one at
every turn. But the conclusion is known in advance: this
war has come home again-in a silky grey powder that goes
from a syringe into America's mainline.
osT OF THE OPIUM IN Joutneast Asia is grown
in a region known as the "Fertile Triangle," an
area covering northwestern Burma, northern
-- Thailand, and Laos. It is a mountainous jungle
inhabited by tigers, elephants, and some of the most poison-
ous snakes in the world. The source. of the opium that
shares the area with these exotic animals is the poppy, and
the main growers are the Meo hill tribespeople who inhabit
the region. The Meo men chop back the forests in the wet
season so that the crop caa be planted in August and Sep-
tember. Poppies produce red, white'or purple blossoms be-
tween January and March, and when the blossom withers,
an egg-sized pod is left. The women harvest the crop and
make a small incision in the pod with a three-bladed knife.
The pod exudes a white latex-like substance which is left to
accumulate and th cken for a day or two. Then it is care-
fully gathered, boiled to remove gross impurities, and the
sticky substance is rolled into balls weighing several pounds.
A fraction of the opium remains to be smoked by the vii-
lagers, but most is sold in nearby rendezvous with the local
smugglers. It is the Meos' only cash crop. The hill tribe
growers can collect as much as $50 per kilo, paid in gold,
silver, various commodities, or local currency. The same
kilo will bring $200 in'Saigon and $2000 in San Francisco.
There are hundreds of routes, and certainly as many
methods of transport by which the smugglers ship opium-
Approved For Release 2001/03/04: CIA-RDP80-01601 R001000160001-6