HEROIN AND THE CIA 'THE POLITICS OF HEROIN IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200300017-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 4, 2004
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: November 1, 1972
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For Release w 1 : CIA-RDP88-0135OR00020030001 3
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LIFE
LETT ERS
HEROIN AND T CIA
by Flora Lewis,
THE POLITICS OF HEROIN IN SOUTH-
EAST ASIA
by Alfred W. McCoy
Harper & Row, $ 10.95
One fact is beyond dispute: heroin
.is flooding into the United States in
sufficient quantities to support an
ever growing number of addicts. Esti-
mates about the drug traffic are unre-
liable, but trends are painfully clear
in mounting deaths, young zombies
stumbling through city streets, crime
to the point of civic terror. There are
? said to be some 560.000 addicts in
America now, twice the number esti-
mated two years ago and ten times
the level of 1960.
Another fact goes unchallenged:
suddenly, in 1970, high-grade pure
white heroin, which Americans prefer
to the less refined drug, more nor-
mally consumed by Asians, appeared
in plentiful and cheap supply wher-
ever there were GI's in Vietnam. The
epidemic was a vast eruption. It took
the withdrawal of the troops to douse
it, for the fearful flow could not be
staunched.
Beyond those facts, the sordid story
of drug trafficking has been a shad-
owy, elusive mixture of controversial
elements. It was obvious that there
must be corruption involved. It was
obvious that there must be politics in-
volved, if only because the traffic con-
tinues to flourish on such a scale de-
spite the energetic pronouncements
of powerful governments. It takes a
map of the whole world to trace the
drug net.
Since the United States suddenly
became aware of the sinister dimen-
sions of the plague and President
Nixon bravely declared war on drugs
(unlike the persistently undeclared
war in Indochina), it has been cus-
tomary for U.S. officials to pinpoint
the poppy fields of Turkey and the
clandestine laboratories of Marseille
as the source of most of the American
curse. Nobody denied that the bulk of
the world's illicit opium (some say 70
percent, some say 50 to 60 percent) is
grown in Southeast Asia and partic-
ularly in the "golden triangle" of
mountains where Burma, Thailand,
and Laos meet. But the U.S. govern-
ment insisted; and continues to insist
in the I11-page report on the world
opium trade published in August,
that this supplies natives and seldom
enters American veins.
Not so, says Alfred W. McCoy,
who spent some two years studying
the trade. And further, it is certain to
become less and less so as measures
which the United States demanded in
Turkey and France take effect in
blocking the old production and
smuggling patterns. This is of crucial
importance for two reasons. One is
that firm establishment of an Asian
pattern to America means that the
crackdown in Turkey and France will
be next to futile so far as availability
of heroin in the United States is con-
cerned. The second is that focusing
attention on Southeast Asia would
bring Americans to understand that
the "war on drugs" is inextricably in-
volved with the Indochina war, and
has to be fought on the same battle-
ground from which President Nixon
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assured us he was disengaging "with
honor."
_ McCoy, a twenty-seven-year-old
Yale graduate student. worked with
immense diligence and considerable
courage-for the opium trade is.dan-
gerous business and the combination
of opium, politics, and-war can be
murderous-to document the facts of
the Asian pattern.
A good deal of it has been common
gossip in tawdry bars of Saigon, Vien-
tiane, and Bangkok for years. But the
gossip mills of Indochina are a long
way from the streets of Harlem and
the high schools of Westchester
County. The general knowledge that
the rumors reflected is a long way
from precise, confirmed detail. So the
Asian pattern had -never come
through clearly in the United States.
Now, in his book The Politics of
Heroin in Southeast Asia, McCoy has
set it down. To show how it devel-
oped, he had to backtrack. The use of
opiates in the United States has a
long history. It wasn't until after
World War I that widespread oppro-
brium, added to growing understand-
ing of the dangers, turned the trade
into an underworld monopoly. But
World War II disrupted the supply
routes. Unable to get drugs, Ameri-
can addicts were forced to quit the
hard way. The market diminished,
and, with a modicum of enforcement
effort and international cooperation,
might have been wiped out.
A single U.S. official act, 'McCoy
believes, turned that chance around
and enabled the creation of a world-
wide octopus of evil almost beyond
Approved For Release 2004/10/13 : CIA-RDP88-0135OR000200300017-3