kuamemiab,

The LaoPDR used illicit drug and the smuggling products
derived from protected wildlife into the states to discredit the Hmong
and the many young girls who have AIDS/HIV to sleep with the Hmong-
Americans.

Read the following story:

Lao exports 'often contain narcotics'

Published on Jan 25, 2002

Lao export items such as hand-made textiles, herbal medicine,
furniture and stuffed animals are widely used as a cover for opium
and
methamphetamine trafficking, said the country's anti-narcotics chief
Soubanh Srithirath.

One way in which traffickers, particularly ethnic Hmong people,
disguised their illicit shipments was by melting raw opium and using
it to dye textiles for export from the land-locked country.

The fact that opium is black, the same as Hmong textiles, means they
do not draw attention from customs officials at checkpoints, he said.

The Hmong minority often used this method to export raw opium to
customers and relatives in the US, which is home to hundreds of
thousands of hill-tribe people who fled after the Communist victory
in
1975, he said. Elderly Hmong in the US were still addicted to opium
and used the illicit drug as if they were in their homeland, said
Soubanh, who is also a minister at the Presidential Office.

Opium was sometimes found hidden in the horns of stuffed animals or
concealed in wooden furniture declared as export items to be sent
abroad, he said.

Methamphetamines and opium were also found in form of herbal
medicine.

The producers dried drugs and turned them into powder before mixing
them with honey and declaring them to customs as herbal medicine, he
said.

These products were sometimes sent through the mail, Soubanh said.
Officials at post offices across the entire the country had been
ordered to look for narcotics concealed in packages, he said.

"All postal items destined for the US are heavily checked," he
said.Laos, second only to Burma in terms of opium production, is
campaigning to rid itself of opium by 2005.

The country produced 117.5 tonnes of opium last year, an amount that
could potentially be transformed into 11.75 tonnes of heroin.

The country's poppy-growing area has shrunk an average of 29 per cent
annually, from 26,000 hectares in 1996, Soubanh said. Laos is
cooperating with the UN in an opium-eradication scheme, that this
year
would see lands devoted to poppy-growing shrink to only 12,000
hectares, he said.

*** TO MY CALCULATION IF THE POOPY GROWING AREA IS SHRINKING AT 29%%
ANNUALLY THE AMOUNT OF POPPY GROWING AREA IS NOW AT 2365 HECTARES.
HERE IS MY CALCULATION
26000 7540 18460 1996
5353.4 13106.6 1997
3800.914 9305.686 1998
2698.64894 6607.03706 1999
1916.040747 4690.996313 2000
1360.388931 3330.607382 2001
965.8761408 2364.731241 2002***
685.7720599 1678.959181 2003
486.8981626 1192.061019 2004
345.6976954 846.3633233 2005

tHE LAO MINISTER IS FULL OF ...
HE HAS NO FACT AND FIGURE TO SUPPORT ANYTHING THAT HE SAID. HE JUST
SIMPLY BIG MOUTH TO GAIN TRUST FROM THE UN AND US.

Supalak Ganjanakhundee

THE NATION

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