Why do South-east Asian states choose to suppress opium? A cross-case comparison

This article was originally published with errors. This version has been corrected. Please see Erratum (https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1388562).

Abstract

This paper compares the reasons given by three South-east Asian states (Laos, Thailand and Vietnam) for choosing to suppress opium production. While external pressure, often from the US or United Nations (UN)/League of Nations, is the most commonly identified reason in the literature, and was experienced in each case, it was not by itself sufficient to motivate states into action. All three cases were motivated by religious or ideological opposition to drug consumption or trade, rural development, state extension and concern for increasing domestic drug consumption. Apprehension about rising drug consumption often possessed racial or chauvinistic elements. The development of export commodities, environmental protection and national security were also identified in one or two cases. The paper concludes by hypothesising that economic and/or security considerations underlie all choices to suppress illicit drug crops.

Keywords:

• Opium
• drug policy
• motivation
• securitisation
• political economy
• illicit drug crops

View correction statement:

Erratum

Acknowledgements

An early draft of this paper was presented at the symposium ‘Drugs, Politics and Society in the Global South’. My thanks to Maziyar Ghiabi for organising the symposium, and the symposium members for thoughtful and constructive comments.

Notes

This article was originally published with errors. This version has been corrected. Please see Erratum (https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1388562).

1. See Galeotti, Narcotics and Nationalism; US State Department, International Narcotics Control Strategy ; Zhang and Chin, A People’s War.

2. See Tullis, Unintended Consequences; Windle, “Harms Caused”; Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production.

3. Wilson and Stevens, Understanding Drug Markets.

4. Caulkins and Hao, “Modelling Drug Market Supply Disruptions.”

5. Pietschmann, “Price-Setting Behaviour.”

6. Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production.

7. Ibid.

8. The eight cases were China (Imperial/Republican), Iran, People’s Republic of China, Turkey, Thailand, Pakistan, Laos and Vietnam.

9. George and Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development.

10. To be included in the study the case had to have produced, at a minimum, an excess of 50 metric tonnes of opium per year for five years and be situated in the Asian/Middle Eastern ‘opium zone’. The intervention had to have taken place during the twentieth century. A full methodological discussion can be found in Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production.

11. Culas, “Migrants, Runaways and Opium Growers”; also Culas and Michaud, “Contribution to the Study of Hmong.”

12. See McCoy, Politics of Heroin; and Holiday, “Her Majesty’s Ambassador’s Visit.”

13. G. Lee, “Minority Policies and the Hmong”; see also US State Department, “State Department Report to Congress.”

14. Westermeyer, Poppies, Pipes and People, 274.

15. Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production.

16. Boonwaat, “Balanced Approach to Opium Elimination”; Chansina, “Lao PDR’s Experience.”

17. Sirivong, “UN–Nonghet Alternative Development Project.”

18. Baird and Shoemaker, “Unsettling Experiences.”

19. Government of Laos, Strategic Programme Framework; UNODC, Laos Opium Survey 2005.

20. Boonwaat, “Balanced Approach to Opium Elimination.”

21. Baird and Shoemaker, “Unsettling Experiences”; Kramer, Jelsma, and Blickman, Withdrawal Symptoms in the Golden Triangle.

22. Windle, “Suppression of Illicit Opium Production.”

23. Boonwaat, “Balanced Approach to Opium Elimination”; US State Department, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (2006 and 2009).

24. See Dze, “State Policies, Shifting Cultivation”; Kramer, Jelsma, and Blickman, Withdrawal Symptoms in the Golden Triangle; Lyttleton, “Relative Pleasures”; Pathan, “Opium Wars.”

25. Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production.

26. Windle, “How the East Influenced.”

27. Morlock, “Limitation on the Production of Opium.”

28. McCoy, Politics of Heroin; Renard, Opium Reduction in Thailand.

29. Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production.

30. Economist, “Thailand: The Other Rebellions.”

31. Ibid; Marks, “Meo Hill Tribe Problem.”

32. Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production.

33. Renard, Opium Reduction in Thailand.

34. Chotpimai, “Third Army Area Narcotics.”

35. Renard, Opium Reduction in Thailand.

36. R. Lee, “Controlling Production of Opiates”; Renard, Opium Reduction in Thailand.

37. Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production.

38. Culas and Michaud, “Contribution to the Study of Hmong.”

39. Boonwaat, “Overview of Alternative Development.”

40. Rapin et al., Ethnic Minorities, Drug Use.

41. Windle, “Suppression of Illicit Opium Production.”

42. Ibid.

43. Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production.

44. See McCoy, Politics of Heroin.

45. Chanlett-Avery, Thailand: Background and US Relations.

46. See Gingeras, Heroin, Organized Crime; Windle, “Very Gradual Suppression.”

47. See Collins, Regulations and Prohibitions; Gingeras, Heroin, Organized Crime.

48. Cima, “Vietnam’s Economic Reform”; Morey, United Nations at Work.

49. Cohen, “Symbolic Dimensions”; Lyttleton, “Relative Pleasures.”

50. League of Nations and UN bodies have long played a significant role in lobbying states to enforce prohibitions and particular drug policies and strategies. For an in-depth discussion see Collins, Regulations and Prohibitions.

51. Kramer, Jelsma, and Blickman, Withdrawal Symptoms in the Golden Triangle.

52. Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production.

53. Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production, 97.

54. Cited in Keyes, “Buddhism and National Integration,” 564.

55. See Bendiksen, “Marketing”; Sirivong, “UN–Nonghet Alternative Development Project”; UNDTCD, “Crop Substitution in Laotian Highlands.”

56. See Corlin, “Hmong and the Land Question.”

57. See Baird and Shoemaker, “Unsettling Experiences”; Bird, ‘Voluntary’ Migration.

58. Baird and Shoemaker, “Unsettling Experiences.”

59. Education has often been used as a means of cultural integration throughout South-east Asia: Michaud and Forsyth, Moving Mountains; Michaud, “Handling Mountain Minorities.”

60. See Gilbert, Nomadic Peoples and Human Rights.

61. See Renard, Opium Reduction in Thailand; Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production.

62. See Asian Development Bank, Sector Assistance Program Evaluation; Chareonpanich, “Integration of Crop Replacement Projects.”

63. Rapin et al., Ethnic Minorities, Drug Use.

64. Asian Development Bank, Sector Assistance Program Evaluation; Nardone, “From Opium to Arabica.”

65. Rosequist, “Narcotics and Agricultural Economics.”

66. See Cohen, “Post-Opium Scenario”; Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production.

67. Handley, The King Never Smiles, 185.

68. McCoy, Politics of Heroin.

69. See Chandola, “The Politics of Opium”; Economist, “Thailand: The Other Rebellions”; Gua, “Opium, Bombs and Trees.”

70. Campbell, “Thais Hesitate to Wreck”; Economist, “Thailand: The Other Rebellions.”

71. Girling, “Northeast Thailand: Tomorrow’s Vietnam?”

72. Culas and Michaud, “Contribution to the Study of Hmong.”

73. Morey, United Nations at Work, 73.

74. Thomas, “Communist Insurgency in Thailand.”

75. Windle, “How the East.”

76. Buddhism in Thailand, and a mixture of Communism, Confucianism and/or Buddhism in China, Laos and Vietnam.

77. Windle, “How the East.”

78. Groves and Roger, “Buddhism and Addictions.”

79. Ladwig, “Between Cultural Preservation.”

80. McNally, “HIV in Contemporary Vietnam.”

81. See Collins, Regulations and Prohibitions.

82. Windle, “How the East.”

83. League of Nations, Commission of Enquiry.

84. Jinawat, “Thailand Country Paper.”

85. Windle, “Security Trumps Drug Control.” Contemporary Thailand’s approach to lowland drug consumption may be termed ‘ultra-prohibitionist’, and zero-tolerance approaches often receive strong support from the general public.

86. Gibson, Narcotics Trade in North Thailand; McCoy, Politics of Heroin.

87. Windle, Slow March from Social Evil.

88. Daviau, “Integration of a Lineage Society.”

89. Epprecht, “Blessing of the Poppy”; Kramer, Jelsma, and Blickman, Withdrawal Symptoms in the Golden Triangle.

90. Lyttleton et al., Watermelons, Bars and Trucks.

91. Cohen, “Symbolic Dimensions,” 177.

92. Lyttleton, “Relative Pleasures.”

93. See Chouvy and Meissonnier, Yaa Baa.

94. See Corlin, “Hmong and the Land Question.”

95. The UK and US also associated opium with Chinese migrants during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Indeed, there were a number of moral panics regarding ‘opium dens in Chinatowns’ threatening ‘to contaminate the West, with young white girls being ravished by sinister Orientals in these squalid places of sexual depravity and degenerate racial mixing’. The Chinese have, conversely, long portrayed opium in conspiratorial terms as a tool used by their enemies (ie British, Japanese and later domestic class enemies) to weaken the state and its peoples: Dikötter, Laamann, and Xun, Narcotic Culture, 94; see also Kohn, “Dope Girls.”

96. Monaghan, Evidence versus Politics.

97. Windle, “Very Gradual Suppression.”

98. Collins, Regulations and Prohibitions; Windle, “How the East”; see also Becker, Outsiders.

99. See Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, 195.

100. See Reiner, “Political Economy, Crime and Criminal Justice.”

101. See for example Delang, “Deforestation in Northern Thailand”; Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed; Quang, “Hmong and Forest Management.”

102. Bendiksen, “Marketing”; Kramer, Jelsma, and Blickman, Withdrawal Symptoms in the Golden Triangle.

103. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 4.

104. Tugault-Lafleur and Turner, “Of Rice and Spice,” 112.

105. Cited in Keyes, “Buddhism and National Integration,” 564.

106. Cohen, “Post-Opium Scenario,” 248.

107. Courtwright, Dark Paradise.

108. Levine and Reinarman, “From Prohibition to Regulation.”

109. Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, 23, 148.

110. Abrahamsen, Blair’s Africa.

111. For examples of securitising speech acts on Asian drug policy, see Emmers, “ASEAN and the Securitization”; Windle “Security Trumps Drug Control”; and, under international law and in Russia, Crick, “Drugs as an Existential Threat.”

112. Collins, ‘Empire, War, Decolonisation’.

113. League of Nations, Commission of Enquiry.

114. Government of Vietnam, Law on Preventing and Combating.

115. Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis.

116. Alien conspiracy and securitisation perspectives can both be traced to early constructivists, such as Howard Becker who analysed moral entrepreneurs lobbying for cannabis prohibition in the US, which resulted in ‘the establishment of a new set of rules’ (ie prohibition). Becker’s original conception of moral entrepreneurs is, however, a little naïve in its belief that they seek ‘to help those beneath them to achieve a better status’, and thus ignores economic or political considerations. Becker, Outsiders, 149, 152.

117. Smith, Mafia Mystique.

118. See Crick, “Drugs as an Existential Threat.”

119. Windle, “Security Trumps Drug Control.”

120. Windle, “Harms Caused.”

121. Silke, “Fire of Iolus.”

122. Similarly, in the early 1970s, Turkey identified the threat suppression posed to political stability and implemented a strict regulated and taxable licit trade.

123. See Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis; Reiner, “Political Economy, Crime and Criminal Justice.”