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6. Drug Use
- Cornell University Press
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Chapter Six Drug Use Most articles and books on the drug trade in the Golden Triangle have focused on the cultivation of opium and the production of heroin and methamphetamine for the world market, and have paid little attention to the negative impact of these drugs on the local population. In this chapter, I will discuss the problem of opium, heroin, and methamphetamine use in the Wa State, Burma, Thailand, and China. Data for this chapter came from my fieldwork in the Wa State, Rangoon, northern Thailand, and the Yunnan Province of China. When discussing the social processes and patterns of drug use in the region, I will rely heavily on interviewers with fifty-two drug users in the Wa area and twenty-five heroin users in Kunming City in Yunnan Province. The interviews were conducted with the aid of two standardized questionnaires, one for the drug users in the Wa area and one for heroin users in Kunming. The Wa State Opium There are no reliable statistics about the extent of opium use in the Wa State. The Wa authorities do not systematically collect this type of 156 Chapter Six information and opium users are reluctant to identify themselves as such because of the stigma attached to being a drug user and also the possibility of being penalized by the authorities.1 According to the Wa Basic Law, if an opium smoker is under fifty, he or she has to enroll in a drug detoxification program for three years. That means that the individual will be forced into confinement in a prisonlike compound for three years. An opium user who is fifty to sixty years old is required to quit within a time limit set by the local authorities and failure to do so means enrollment in a forced detoxification program. An opium smoker above the age of sixty is left alone by the authorities. In an interview in 2001, a public health official with the Wa government told me that “about fifteen years ago, there were twenty thousand to thirty thousand opium smokers in the Wa area. Over the past ten years, about ten thousand people were arrested for smoking opium and approximately four thousand quit. Now there are only about ten thousand opium smokers . We began to arrest young opium smokers in 1989.”2 In the interviews with three hundred opium growers, we asked them whether they used opium; only twenty-four (8 percent) said they smoked opium. This figure may not be reliable because we are certain that some subjects denied their opium use out of shame or fear. The United Nations 2005 opium survey in Burma indicated that the average level of opium addiction in the Wa area was only 0.83 percent (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2005a), an estimate the UN believed is highly unreliable. According to the data I collected, opium growers living some distance from the border area with China (i.e., Nankangwu, Denge, Yingpan, Hedao) were more likely to admit smoking opium than those who lived close to China (i.e., Longtan, Nandeng, Shaopa, Aicheng). In fact, none of the subjects interviewed in the border area with China said they smoked opium. The twenty-four subjects who said they smoked opium were predominantly married Wa males in their fifties. Most of them said they smoked opium once or twice a day. initiation into opium use In addition to questioning opium growers in the hilltop villages about their opium use, we also interviewed twenty-five opium users in Bangkang . In the face-to-face interviews conducted using a standardized questionnaire , we asked the subjects about their backgrounds, their initiation into opium use, their patterns of use, and the impact of opium use. The twenty-five opium users interviewed in Bangkang were mostly Wa males [3.81.97.37] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:05 GMT) Drug Use 157 in their forties or fifties, married, unemployed, and had no or very little education. Many opium users told us that the main reason for their initiation into opium use was to cure illness, as a forty-year-old Wa woman, married with five children, explained: At one point, I was afflicted with a very serious and strange disease and the pain was unbearable. I wanted to die. My whole body, from head to toe, felt like it was on fire. I went to China for treatment, but the doctors there said I was dying...