> 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
>
> http://www.nationmultimedia.com/page.arcview.php3?clid=4&id=54651&usr...