Word: opium
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...have bloomed for centuries in the remote, jungle-clad valleys of northern Laos where five nations-Laos. Red China, Burma. Thailand and Communist North Viet Nam-meet in a tangle of ill-defined boundaries. The local Meos and kindred tribesmen delicately pierce the flowering buds, extract the sticky raw opium. Some of it they use themselves: when a Meo child complains of an ache, his mother may blow opium smoke into his mouth to ease the pain; for Meo adults, opium smoking provides a goofing-off pleasure that is their substitute for the combined attractions of alcohol, tobacco, literature...
...week 600 schoolchildren wearing white shirts and black berets marched through the puddled streets of Vientiane in the first "antivice" drive in Laotian history. They carried "good'' banners, hailing the three Rs of "Revolution, Roads and Rice,'' and "bad'' banners condemning equally Communism, opium, prostitution, gambling and liquor. General Ouane Rattinkoun, 34, the Laotian chief of staff, watched approvingly as the bad banners were heaped in a pile, doused with gasoline and set afire. General Ouane. who has a Buddhist horror of going to extremes, says, "There is no question of making physical...
...types who belong to something known as the Corsican brotherhood. From here the business gets into illicit channels and high prices. By pony caravan, or by light planes that take off from jungle airfields built by the French during their five-year war with Communist Viet Minh, the raw opium is transported to Bangkok and Hong Kong, bought by Chinese dealers at up to $1,000 a kilo and refined into morphine and heroin, as well as smokable opium. Smugglers then take possession, hoping for the vast profits to be gained from selling the narcotics in the big cities...
Thailand also had a bonfire last week when police raided 854 opium dens throughout the nation, sealed up unsold stocks and piled almost 9,000 opium pipes, many of ivory and rare mandarin wood, in front of Bangkok's Grand Palace. Drenched with gasoline and set afire, the blaze was watched by thousands until dawn. Boasted Thailand's boss. Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, who has also closed down nightclubs, "massage parlors" and brothels: "From this day we can proudly claim that we are a civilized people. Gone will be those trying days when we were pilloried...
...where British merchants had dozed over month-old copies of the London Times, a seamen's club; Blood Alley, where sailors used to break each other's heads in chauvinistic brawls, resounded only to the click of chopsticks in cooperative noodle shops. Bars and dance halls and opium dens closed down; prostitutes and beggars vanished from the newly swept streets...