Withdrawal symptoms for Golden Triangle drug trade

OPIUM PRODUCTION in the Golden Triangle has decreased significantly over the past decade. This has caused a sense of optimism among UN drug-control officials. According to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime director Antonio Maria Costa: "The Golden Triangle is closing a dramatic period of opium reduction. A decade-long process of drug control is clearly paying off."

There is, however, little reason for optimism. The exact size of the decline is still debatable, as there are questions about the accuracy of the high Burmese production figures at the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s. Additionally, there has been a shift in cultivation patterns to new areas inside Burma, including double cropping, and the last two years have once again seen increases in opium production.

More worrying is that the rapid decline has caused major suffering among former poppy-growing communities in Burma and Laos, making it difficult to characterise developments as a "success story". Although some international aid has been provided to ex-poppy farmers, this clearly has not been enough to offset the impact of the ban on their livelihoods. The World Food Programme and China have provided emergency food assistance to communities in former opium-growing regions in northern Burma, but this is not a sustainable solution.

Meanwhile, the market of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) has increased rapidly, one of the signs of changing characteristics in the regional drugs market. Initially the opium decline mainly affected exports to other regions of the world, as the US and European markets were taken over by abundant heroin supplies from Latin America and Afghanistan. Only more recently, have the first indications of an opium and heroin shortage in Southeast Asia begun to appear. Higher prices and lower quality of heroin are leading to shifts in consumer behaviour, including in problematic directions. While the total numbers of opium-and- heroin-users may be going down, more have started to inject, this being the most cost-effective means of administering drugs. Many have shifted to a cocktail of pharmaceutical replacements, mainly opioids and benzodiazepines, representing largely unknown health risks.

Confronted with harsh domestic repression and very little support from the international aid community, both farmers and users in the region are struggling to find coping strategies to deal with the rapid changes. Drug-control officials have falsely presumed that reducing opium production would lead to a reduction in drug consumption and drug-related problems. The reality in Southeast Asia proves them wrong. Had quality treatment services been in place, more drug users may have chosen that option. In the absence of adequate health care and within a highly repressive law enforcement environment, most are forced to find their own "solutions". Harm reduction services are still only accessible to a tiny proportion of those who need them, even though most countries have now adopted the basic principles in their policy framework. Only China has started to significantly scale up needle exchange and methadone programmes to prevent a further spreading of HIV/Aids and other blood-borne infections.

In 1998, a declaration was signed to make Asean drug-free by 2020, which two years later was even brought forward to 2015. Countries elaborated national plans to comply with the deadline putting huge pressure on farmers to abandon poppy cultivation and on police to arrest as many users and traders as possible. The whole region experienced disproportional sentences for minor drug law offences and rapidly escalating prison populations. It also led to the "War on Drugs" in Thailand in which between 2,000 and 3,000 drug-users and small-scale traders were killed in 2003. The 2008 status report on progress achieved towards making Asean and China drug-free, "identifies an overall rising trend in the abuse of drugs", however, and acknowledges that "a target of zero drugs for production, trafficking and consumption of illicit drugs in the region by 2015 is obviously unattainable".

To prevent exacerbating the hardships already being suffered by rural communities, and undermining the sustainability of achievements to date, Asean member states should not force matters by the deadline. Drug-control policies should be development-oriented, take a longer-term perspective and concentrate on putting alternative livelihoods in place for opium farmers. Similarly, drug users should not be treated as criminals. Instead what is needed is an increase in both quantity and quality of treatment and harm-reduction services, and a review of drug laws with a view to "humanising" them.

It is also vital that the international community does not abandon the Golden Triangle at this crucial time. Support for programmes in the region that provide alternative livelihoods and harm-reduction services need to be scaled up. Without such approaches, it is unlikely that the reduction in opium production will be sustainable and the rapid changes in the drugs market might lead to undesirable outcomes.

See also TNI's study "Withdrawal Symptoms - Changes in the Southeast Asian drugs market" >>