Drugs banned but on hand in Laukkai

Drugs

Drugs banned but on hand in Laukkai

Smoker's tools in a Laukkai den

Preparing opium

Preparing Khakhu (a mixture of opium and poppy pod shreds or Hpak-nawk Loi, a kind of edible creeper)

Enjoying it

Against the official ban declared in 2002, drugs are still available in Laukkai, the capital of Kokang region in northern Shan State, reports Salween News Network correspondent on his return:

"There are several places like this in Laukkai," confided the Thai-speaking guide as he escorted SNN to a room behind a restaurant on his first night in Laukkai. "The Kokang say poppy fields are being destroyed and Yaba (methamphetamine) factories are being dismantled but you can get everything here."

His companion, a local, frowned on at him and told SNN, "That's because everything is imported from outside Kokang."

Which was in contrast to what Chairman Peng Jiasheng said later, "Understandably, there are places like Nankwang where people are still growing poppies, because it is difficult to withdraw from something we have been engaging for untold generations right away."

The Kokang Administrative Committee, led by Peng Jiasheng, in its notification on 28 March 2002, reported that in accordance with the instructions of then Secretary-1 Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt at the meeting held in Lashio on 22 March," Action will be taken against whoever engages in" poppy cultivation and production, trafficking and abuse of drugs with punishments ranging from "prison term, life imprisonment and death sentences." (Wa told they're on their own, S.H.A.N., 2 April 2002)

In 2000, the leadership set up a treatment center for addicts. However it soon went out of business due to the "oversupply" of drug users coming down from the surrounding hills to procure its service, according to one of the restaurant's patrons.

"Due to the restrictions, 'heavy industry' factories are no more", joked another patron. "Now, we have more of the 'home industry' kind, which are easy to dismantle and move away on short notice."

One other result is the mushrooming of casinos in place of the drug factories. "In Laukkai alone, there are more than ten of them," SNN's guide said.

The crackdown had also forced hundreds of Chinese residents to move back across the border. "Not more than one-third of them remain in Kokang," said a local. However, the number of gamblers coming across the border to fill up the casinos in Laukkai more than made up for the exodus, he added.

According to S.H.A.N.'s December report on the drug situation in Shan State, Show Business, the main reasons why the Kokang territory has been most affected by the war on drugs campaign appear to be the proximity of the area to the Chinese border, coupled with the fact that its ceasefire army, Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, had been seriously weakened over the years by internal rifts and hence poses no serious threat to Rangoon, and Rangoon's own desperate need to gain international legitimacy, among others.