Production of opium doubles over two years
Growing crisis in the Golden Triangle area
ACHARA ASHAYAGACHAT SUBIN KHUENKAEW
Opium poppy cultivation in Thailand doubled from 2004-2006, with teenagers increasingly getting involved in the trade, a narcotics official said yesterday.
The finding is in line with the latest report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which revealed a resurgence in opium production in the Golden Triangle, where the borders of Laos, Burma and Thailand meet.
Pipop Chamnivikaipong, director of the Narcotic Crops Survey and Monitoring Institute, said areas planted with poppies in Thailand had gradually increased from 700 rai in 2004 to 900 rai in 2005 and 1,400 rai last year.
Releasing the institute's annual survey in Bangkok yesterday, he said the Thaksin administration's war against drugs had contributed to a sharp drop in opium production in Thailand.
Since the September coup last year there had been less emphasis on eradication and some growers and traffickers were taking advantage of it. Mr Pipop predicted production would increase again next year, mainly in remote areas of Chiang Mai such as Om Koi district.
''The growers are not the same as before. They're teenagers tempted by what they see as lax government controls, and profits,'' he said.
Xavier Bouan, a Rangoon-based UNODC expert of the Illicit Crop Monitoring Programme, said opium production in Thailand last year was up 25% to 3.2 tonnes, Burma increased 46% to 460 tonnes and Laos was up 54% to 9.2 tonnes. About 163,000 households in Burma were involved in opium poppy cultivation, compared with about 1,600 households in Thailand, he said.
Unless an immediate alternative livelihood programme was undertaken in the Golden Triangle, about 200,000 households would soon return to poppy cultivation, he said.
Mr Bouan said the most worrisome trend in the region was in the southern part of Shan state, which is responsible for 64% of Burma's opium cultivation.
Shariq bin Raza, the UNODC representative to Burma, denied the Shan area was singled out because of the presence there of anti-government rebels.
''In areas where fewer groups control the fields it's easier to control opium production or monitor eradication, like in the Wa area where they have done quite well in the past few years, until now,'' Mr Raza said.
Narcotics Control Board officials said in Chiang Mai that cash is no longer a usual part of transactions between drug dealers.
Suppliers along the northern Thai borders were mostly ethnic minority people, including the Wa militant groups, and the southern border area of Thailand is the lucrative destination for their drugs. Traffickers can get 10 times what they would for the same drugs in the North.
To cover their trail, drug suppliers in the North are collecting payment in goods rather than in cash, say officials.
The drugs are brought in from Burma, mostly via the Mae Sai border checkpoint in Chiang Rai. Local traders estimate that billions of baht of drugs are smuggled through the checkpoint each month.
Commodities worth about the same amount are then transported back into Burma as payment.
When suppliers receive their orders, they match them with orders for commodities such as construction equipment, which their customers order from Bangkok. The clients pay for the goods with the cash they get from drug sales in the deep South, officials said.
Bangkok Post Oct. 12, 2007