In the golden triangle with a handful of dollars

The only way of reaching this part of the world, which is on the borders of northern Thailand, Burma and Laos, is by helicopter. It is a mountainous region, mostly covered by forest and inhabited by a tribal population estimated at 300,000 to 500,000 persons who live in some 3,000 villages. The people, who are seminomadic move about with their personal property and weapons, without any form of control. They have been cultivating the opium poppy since the beginning of the century and this single crop provides all that is needed for the livelihood of the families. In an area where all transport is by back-pack, opium provides a good return for a low weight. The opium is used to supply the international market and is also the source of regional drug addiction, which can perhaps be better described as the local therapy for the pains of illness and old age. To consider banning poppy cultivation or destruction of the plantations is a pipe-dream in this inaccessible, uncontrollable area, which has no administrative infrastructure. Consequently, repressive action is directed only against traffickers. Because of the geographical position of the "Golden Triangle", there is substantial cross-frontier traffic. The boundary lines are tortuous, mountainous and frostcovered, and surveillance is therefore quite impossible. Police tactics are therefore to let traffickers proceed sufficiently far into the country so that they can be attacked without their being able to escape across the frontier. The over all enforcement activity throughout Thailand has yielded results and statistics are available to prove it. What is now needed is to find a substitute for opium poppy cultivation and start on this has been made with the help of the United Nations Fund for Drug Abuse Control (UNFDAC). This very ambitious plan consists in completely transforming the economic life of the tribes. The people will be induced to abandon their nomadic life and become sedentary and to switch over from a single-crop system to mixed farming. The first stage of the plan is scheduled to operate until 1977. An agronomy station has been set up to carry out trials and tests of crop varieties that might be adapted to the region. At the same time, five "pilot" villages have been chosen to carry out the experiment. By force of example, the experience of these five villages will be applied by 30 other so-called "satellites". Later, there is no reason why there should not be 300 and then 1,000. But this small group of experts must be given support, because there is still a great deal to be done.