A Short History of Opium

In China, the vice of opium smoking, which claimed the lives, health and livelihoods of millions in the subsequent centuries, was only effectively ended when the Communists took power after the 1949 revolution and banned opium in all its forms. Criminalisation of opiates has been enacted in most countries, while industrial chemistry techniques have enabled the rapid widespread distribution of heroin, which is derived from opium. Heroin is much more easily concealed than opium and, being in concentrated form, is capable of yielding higher profits.

At the same time, imperial colonial officers throughout mainland Southeast Asia presided over the significant growth of opium usage in the region either through indifference or as a means of supplementing personal income. A further boost to production and international distribution occurred with the initiation of the US war in Vietnam, during which large numbers of overseas combatants and non-combatants spent extended periods of time in the region and hugely increased the demand for recreational drugs for several years, thereby stimulating an increase in supply capacity.

In recent years, attempts to eradicate opium growing in the highlands of the Golden Triangle have included schemes to provide alternative cash crops from which the people can provide regular and sufficient revenue. These schemes have achieved some limited success but failed to address the demand issues that will stimulate continued production and have intensified the suspicion and dislike felt by the majority lowland peoples for ethnic minority highlanders.

References and Further Reading

Renard, Ronald D., "The Making of a Problem: Narcotics in Mainland Southeast Asia," in Don McCaskill and Ken Kampe, Development or Domestication? Indigenous Peoples of Southeast Asia (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1997), pp.307-28.

John Walsh
Mahidol University
November 2003

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