In the 1970s, Gene Hackman starred in a movie called The French Connection. It tells the story of how undercover American narcotics agents intercept a massive shipment of heroin being smuggled into the U.S. inside a sports car. I can’t remember if the movie ever says exactly where the drugs came from , but it’s likely they originated in Asia’s Golden Triangle and got shipped to New York City via Marseilles, France. The movie was based on a true story and I’m sure the film’s producer was aware of Alfred McCoy’s The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. It shows how there is an impossibly complex history of corruption, politics, greed, and Western intervention that has always facilitated the drug trade and probably alwayw will.
This book combines historical research with muckraking investigative journalism contemporary to the time of its publication in the early 1970s. Of course, that was a time when the drug culture and the Vietnam War were in full swing so it shouldn’t surprise anybody that the two are linked. It starts with a crash course in the history of poppy cultivation, the opium trade, the invention of morphine and heroin, their legal medicinal use in the Western world, and how all of this relates to Asia. Then we get to World Warr II when the OSS, the prototype of the CIA, collaborated with the Mafia to ensure Mussolini didn’t gain power in Sicily. The American government turned a blind eye to the heroin trade in the name of fighting fascism. As the Sicilian gangsters declined in power, the Corsican Mafia stepped in and partially took over. This overlapped with the French-Indochina Wars in the 11950s when Vietnam tried to decolonize and kick the French out. The Corsican Mafia remained in Vietnam though and continued doing business as the Americans took over where France left off. Meanwhile the Viet Minh, who later became the Comunist party, funded their war of anti-colonialism by selling poppies grown by Meo hill tribe farmers in North Vietnam and Laos. At this point you can guess that the story has nowhere to go but down.
There is also a detailed analysis of the Golden Triangle, a region of Southeast Asia including northeast Myanmar, Western Laos, and northeast Thailand. This is where poppy cultivation flourished and heroin manufacturing did too, especially because heroin at every level of production, distribution, and use was 100 percent legal in Laos. And why wouldn’t it be? Every political party and branch of the military had a hand in the narcotics trade. Like in North Vietnam, poppies were being farmed and sold to support the separatist revolutionaries of the Shan state in Myanmar, the anti-communist militias of the Chinese Kuomintang, and intelligence gathering agents of the CIA all in the same region. Drugs coming from the Golden Triangle were smuggled, with help from the Thai military and police, to Bangkok, Hong Kong, and, most importantly, Saigon. These were the major distribution points for the rest of the world.
What’s really interesting about this book is that it accounts for the context of the heroin trade in great detail. To understand how and why it flourished at that time, you need to understand the political and military structures of the countries involved. The two countries that get the most detailed analyses are South Vietnam and Laos. Both countries had trouble establishing democratic rule because politicians and military officials work with supporters and constituents that function more like tribes. Among the supporters are religious sects and criminal gangs along with varieties of other individuals, most of which are corrupt and greedy. These factions work by competing with each other. The conflicts often escalate to territorial disputes, violence, and assassinations so when America was supporting the government of South Vietnam in an effort to cleans the country of communists and nationalists, stability could never be established. Democracy could never function in a place where gangsterism overrode consensus as a method of governing. The result was that America got defeated because they were supporting a government that lacked competency and will, caring about nothing but accumulating riches while thinking of the American military as nothing but a national guard doing their duty of protecting them from the North Vietnamese. The author makes a good point by stating that the blockheads in the America were blinded to the reality of the heroin trade because they single-mindedly fought against the communists rather than taking the whole picture into account. Even worse, they had no understanding of the culture they were trying to dominate. In the end, most of the drugs produced in the Golden Triangle wound up in either US military bases or being shipped overseas to America and Europe while the US allies and enemies in Southeast Asia laughed all the way to the bank. Rampant heroin addicted among US soldiers in Vietnam became a problem and the tribal poppy farmers were stuck in a cycle of impoverishment because other forms of agriculture did not yield enough profits for them to survive. Also, the drug cartels often used Meo tribal people as pawns in proxy wars to fight for different drug running factions managed by politicians and military leaders. As usual, the CIA and American government turned a blind eye to all this just so long as the these drug merchants didn’t support the communists. But then again, some of those merchants did clandestinely support the communists because dealing with them in the drug trade brought them profits and profits meant more than principles. Don’t even try to imagine that much has really changed since the 1970s.
McCoy’s account of the heroin business is a real accomplishment. The details and intricacies are thoroughly explained in a way that makes a challenging read, but is consistently comprehensible if you make the effort to keep track of small details. He doesn’t just focus on the corruption of the authorities and organized crime syndicates either; this book contains a sympathetic understanding of how the poppy farmers are impoverished and trapped by their crops and how devastating opium and heroin are to people who are unfortunate enough to get sucked into the black hole of addiction. This is no work of journalistic entertainment. The complexities of the writing and subject matter make it almost forbidding reading. It is a great work of writing though and also a real eye-opener for anyone who wants to know about the darker side of Southeast Asia, U.S. involvement in the region, and how our government is enabling the drug problems they claim to be legislating against.
In conclusion, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia is probably more valuable as a historical document since a few things have changed since America’s disastrous and foolhardy invasion of Vietnam in the 1960s. Those changes have probably been minor ones though. Poppy cultivation has since moved to Afghanistan and the pipeline of drugs coming from South and Central America up through Mexico and into the U.S. continues to flow unchecked. It just makes you wonder what the CIA is doing these days to keep the supply coming whether its by accident or not. Otherwise, I have spent some time in Southeast Asia and the three countries of the Golden Triangle so I need to say that it has a gorgeous landscape populated by beautiful and kindhearted people with a rich culture; don’t let a book like this ruin your perceptions of this truly amazing part of the world. And finally, don’t EVER try heroin. I’ve seen it wreck people’s lives. Don’t be stupid enough to think you can use it for a weekend recreational high. You can’t. I’ve known several people who have died, one of which was a talented code writer working for Google who overdosed two months after he got married to a woman he fell madly in love with. Please don’t make that same mistake. Do whatever you want with your own body, but don’t ever shoot up junk.
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