Word: opium
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...read with interest in the July 13 issue of TIME of the moves being made by the Thai government to stop the opium trade. During 1957-59 I lived with the Miao people. I have refrained from publishing my photographs of the opium growing because this is the sole cash crop of the people. But as it is to be stopped that reason no longer holds...
...scraped with a three-pronged scraper early in the morning, and the opium taken off with a knife before noon and wrapped in a poppy petal [see cut]. Stopping the opium trade is only half the problem. It is necessary to give these people other sources of income, as opium has been traditionally their source for trade goods. They get a low price for it, the profit going to unknown people further down the drug train...
...public outcry from conservative Burmese (echoed by the opportunistic pro-Communist press) against such Western innovations as rock 'n' roll ("dance of mad persons with chronic diarrhea"). Western ballroom dancing ( "couple-rubbing exhibitions" ) and beauty contests ("degradation of Burmese womanhood"). Last month the government destroyed opium crops in a northern district, warned that other opium growers in the Kachin and Shan states would be the next to suffer...
South Viet Nam, under President Ngo Dinh Diem, an ascetic Roman Catholic, four years ago closed down its opium dens, which had been legal throughout the years of French rule, and shut up some of the fanciest whorehouses in the Far East. So successful has the government been that there is only a small clandestine traffic in opium across its borders...
...these censorious activities the West tends to get blamed for what it introduced and what it did not. How long the reforming move will last in Southeast Asia, no one knows. But if Hula-Hoops and B-girls are easily legislated against, wiping out opium will come harder, for hundreds of thousands of addicts remain whose cure will take time and money...