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THE POLITICS OF. HEROIN.' IN
SOUTHEAST ASIA. By Alfred W. Mc-
Coy, with Cathleen B. Read and Leonard
P. Adams 11. Harper & Row. 464 pp.
$10.95.
L' ucfi ni. usfai rz.
Mr. Russett teaches political science at
Yale University.
Most Americans used to think that the
costs of an interventionist foreign policy
were low. For relatively small expendi-
tures of foreign aid money, arms, or oc-
casionally ? the presence of American
troops, one could build bastions of the
Free World all around the globe. Anti-
Communist governments in the under-
developed countries could be supported
or created, and anti-Communist politi-
cians subsidized. Indeed, as in the Shan
states of Burma or the Indonesian islands,
separatist forces could be encouraged-
if the ruling government could not be
overthrown, or at least persuaded to
move in desired directions. Some of these
efforts might also bring enlightened gov-
crnments and policies, to the countries in
question. Others would succeed at the
cost of strengthening or imposing cor-
rupt, oligarchic, reactionary govern-
ments. Many others would fail, at the
:cost of death and misery, for the peoples
who lived in those distant countries. But
the costs to the United States would be
minimal, easily tolerated by the world's
richest power. And those small costs to
us seemed far preferable to living in a
world of Communist or neutralist-
nationalist states.
Our innocence about the costs of an
interventionist foreign policy has been
lost in the wake of Indochina. Even if
we could (as many still would) ignore
the costs of our war to the wretched
peoples of that area, we now have felt
some substantial costs to ourselves. Fifty-
six thousand young Americans dead,
$200 billion spent, an economy and for-
eign trade balance badly out of kilter,
intense strains on our domestic, social
and political system-these we now
recognize as part of the price we pay.
In this new book Alfred McCoy and his
associates show us another cost, very
possibly the grimmest of all, resulting
from our addiction to interventionism:
the heroin plague.
Drug addiction has of course been
a curse of men for many centuries, and
the United States has had thousands of
heroin addicts since about sixty years
ago. Neither the CIA nor Dean Rusk
nor Henry Kissinger invented heroin ad-
diction. But every designer, executor, or
enthusiast for an interv94 tjipbyd@l?gt i-
rand that includes me and prob-
ably you in our less-enlightened ' days)
contributed by failing to know or to care
much about the more subtle conse-
quences of that policy.
As McCoy points out, there were
around 20,000 addicts in the United
States in 1946; the best estimates are
that the figures then grew to about
opium runners and their accomplices in
Southeast Asia, that was just the. way it
had to be. In any case, it usually seemed
to be the. citizens of the countries far
away, not Americans, who paid the price
of such alliances. Until 1970, for in-
stance, opium grown in the Golden Tri-
angle stayed almost entirely in South-
east Asia for Southeast Asians. Only in
57,000 in 1965, 315,000 in 1969, and ~ that spring did the great flood of heroin
'560,000 in 1971. The avalanche of ad- .
diction was made possible by an evil to GIs in Vietnam begin, and only later
combination of supply and demand, De- still did it start to flow directly to the
mand means the ability of American United States, And it was not until that
drug consumers to pay high prices, social time that senior officials in the U.S. Gov-
conditions feeding the desire for an es- eminent decided that the Southeast Asian
cape, and the enthusiasm of pushers pre- heroin trade should be suppressed.
pared to distribute free samples gener-
ously. Under such circumstances the McCoy and his colleagues show
market will grow as fast as supply will us, convincingly, that the heroin trade
permit. The supply comes from abroad: grew with the acquiescence and some-
formerly from Turkey and Iran, now times with the assistance of men in our
largely from Southeast Asia-60 to 70 government. Without our government's
'
per cent of the world
s illicit opium from ' history of single-minded anti-cornmu-
the "G
ld
"
o
en Triangle
of Burma, Laos
and Thailand. It is grown by peasants,
shipped to the United States and dis-
tributed by Corsican and Mafia under-
world gangs, and moved from the peas-
ants to the gangs with the assistance of
such friendly Freedom Fighters as Gen.
Phoumi Nosavan of Laos, and Ngo Dinh
Diem and Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky
of South Vietnam. After enormous and
carefully documented exposition McCoy
finds that the United States:
has acquired enormous power
in the region, And it has used this
power to create new nations where
none existed, handpick prime ministers,
topple governments, and crush revolu-
tions. But U.S. officials in Southeast
Asia have always tended to consider
the opium- tratlic a quaint local custom
and have generally turned a blind eye
to official involvement. . However,
American involvement has gone far
beyond coincidental complicity; em-
bassies have covered up involvement
by client governments,. CIA contract
airlines have carried opium,' and in-
dividual CIA agents .have winked at
the opium traffic.
nism, and of meddling in the politics of
foreign lands, our government and our
people would now have a heroin prob-
lem of much smaller proportions:' Oilicial
American complicity in the drug trade
has to stop. No matter. how much some
cold-warrior leaders may like the foreign
policy of a particular foreign govern-
ment, if that government is condoning
heroin traffic, American military and
economic aid should be withdrawn. The
Cit.t\i~,0 t ?t a t'tcr fs,
C. I. y-I C, i _ t -1k 0 c
or^t
This important book should not be
interpreted.as a piece of yellow journal-
ism or as an expose of scandals in the
CIA. It details none of the, classic sort
of corruption for personal enrichment on
the part of CIA men or of any other
U.S. Government officials (though there
is plenty on the, part of the locals). The
corruption is of a more subtle sort, stem-
ming from the enthusiasm of "good" men
for doing a good job. The job was de-
lined as halting. communism; the choice
of means or of allies was not so im-
portant. One worked with the tools
available. If this meant Corsican gangs
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