The fearful legacy of China’s autonomy from Western influence.

Following Khun Sa’s military defeat and imprisonment the rival opium warlord, Lo Hsing Han, became one of the region’s powerful military leaders. In 1973 he formed an alliance with the SSA to broker a deal with the US government for a pre-emptive purchase of 400 tonnes of opium for $20 million that would have ended the south-east Asian heroin export trade.

British film-maker Adrian Cowell acted as intermediary with the US government but the deal was never consummated because Lo Hsing Han was arrested and sentenced to death but received a pardon after serving eight years. The following year, Khun Sa was released from prison and regained control of the Golden Triangle heroin export trade.

Cowell described how Khun Sa also formed an alliance with the SSA and tried to end the south-east Asian heroin export trade by trying to broker a deal with the US for a pre-emptive purchase of Burma’s opium crop.

The offer received the backing of the Chairman of the US Commission on Drugs, Lester Wolfe, but US presidential advisor Dr Peter Bourne advised against the pre-emptive buy-back. Bourne recommended that the US government finance the Burmese army to use force to eradicate the heroin export trade. From 1974 to 1988 the US government poured $80 million into anti-narcotics efforts in Burma with the General Accounting Office of the US State Department adding another $5 million in 1988. All US Aid was finally suspended following the attack on pro-democracy demonstrators after General Ne Win’s one-party rule was replaced with the newly established State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC).

The political duplicity and implications of the Asian heroin export trade allows opium to remain the unofficial cash crop of impoverished rural areas in Asia. The world’s major illicit heroin-producing opium crops are cultivated in a zone stretching from central Turkey through Iran, Afganistan, Pakistan, India, Burma, Laos, Thailand and southern China and in some areas opium has replaced the traditional rice crops.

Asia’s capacity to produce and export significant quantities of heroin has had devastating impact upon every facet of Australian society. It is estimated that there are between 80 000 to 100 000 habitual heroin users in Australia which results in an estimated 70 per cent of all criminal activity being drug-related.

The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the NSW University estimated the economic cost of heroin abuse in Australia was $1.7 billion a year. Contemporary strategies employed to combat the problem have become fragmented into philosophical arguments concerning the merits of drug rehabilitation programs, methadone substitution programs, and harm reduction strategies, as opposed to zero tolerance, detoxification, or legalised heroin trials.

Irrespective of the different strategies being employed to combat the heroin plague experienced by Australian society, it is a problem that has directly resulted from the expansionist and interventionist policies of Western powers during the 19th century. They were policies that moulded China into a singly autonomous superpower with a nationalistic pride in its own self-preservation. They were policies that also decimated Australian youth and have ultimately contributed to the death and destruction of young Australians lives.