Security trumps drug control: How securitization explains drug policy paradoxes in Thailand and Vietnam

Abstract

This paper investigates the paradoxes inherent in Thai and Vietnamese drug policies. The two countries have much in common. Both are ultra-prohibitionist states which employ repressive policies to contain drug markets. Their policies have, however, diverged in two key areas: opium suppression and harm reduction. Thailand implemented an effective intervention to suppress opium farming centred upon alternative development, whereas Vietnam suppressed opium production through coercive negotiation with nominal alternative development. Vietnam has embraced elements of harm reduction, whereas Thailand has been slow to implement harm reduction policies. This paper hypothesises that these two differences are largely a product of their perceived relationship to security. The two cases demonstrate how once an issue is securitized the ultra-prohibitionist rules of the game can be broken to allow for more humane and pragmatic policies.

Keywords:

• Harm reduction
• HIV
• illicit drugs
• insurgency
• opiates
• policy
• securitization
• Thailand
• Vietnam

Declaration of interest

Some of research used in this paper was conducted as part of the Brookings Institute ‘Improving Global Drug Policy’ project. The author received travel support from the Brookings Institute to present findings at a meeting. An early draft of this paper was presented at a seminar hosted by the Institute of Strategic Studies.

Notes

¹The most widely consumed drugs are heroin (Vietnam) and yaa baa (Thailand; methamphetamine pills cut with caffeine), although crystal methamphetamine consumption is rising in both states (see UNODC, 2015; Windle, 2015a,b). For a discussion on the harms associated with methamphetamine and heroin consumption see Roxburgh, Ritter, Slade, and Burns (2013).

²Harm reduction here:

… refers to policies, programmes and practices that aim primarily to reduce the adverse health, social and economic consequences of the use of legal and illegal psychoactive drugs without necessarily reducing drug consumption. (HRI, 2015, no page)

³While this paper refers to the Thai intervention as humane, this is not to imply that it followed harm reduction principles. Such a conceptual discussion is beyond the scope of this paper, however, as reducing harm was not the interventions primary goal it may be difficult to conceptualise it as harm reduction (see Lenton & Single, 1998).

⁴A pilot harm reduction strategy, launched in February 2014, stalled after the 2014 military coup. If implemented it would have supported the distribution of clean needles and coordinated the administration of harm reduction with civil society (International Drug Policy Consortium, 2014).

⁵Nationally it is more common to eat or smoke yaa baa pills (UNODC, 2015; World Bank, 2010). There are, however, relatively large methamphetamine injecting populations in some areas (Barrett et al., 2010; Hayashi et al. 2011; UNODC, 2011), including “poly-drug users who continue to inject, inhale, and ingest a range of illegal drugs” (World Bank, 2010, p. 5).

See Pinkham and Stone (2015) for a discussion on the range of strategies available for amphetamine consumers.

⁶In 2010, the Council of State declared that needle exchanges promote drug use, and are thus inconsistent with Thai drug control law. The ruling forced Prime Minister Vejjajiva to abandon plans for a national harm reduction strategy.

⁷During the 1950s China and Iran suppressed the production of opium (Windle, 2016). India strengthened its control over regulated opium production and exportation for the pharmaceutical industry and, although diversion from the state monopoly means that India currently remains one of the world’s largest sources of illicit opium, very little exported (Windle, 2012a).