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economic problems in their daily life every year. The cultivation of rice on the hill spends 10 months in a year. The tribesmen have to clear the forest in January or February for their next coming crops, leaving the cut-down trees dried in the sun until they are burnt in April or May. If it rains before April or May earlier, the trees will not be burnt, and that means no rice growing in that year. After the trees are burnt and the land is ready for plough but if there is no rain in June, sowing of rice seeds cannot be made. Sometimes, in June and July there is heavy rain, making the land too good for the rice seeds to grow but the grasses growing rapidly. If the grass is not destroyed, the rice cannot be grown and given its yield. Speaking in a short cut, the rice grows very well and can give the yield but many various natural damages such as fire, insects, beast animals, etc. destroy their crops. Concluded that there is no cer- tainty for the tribesmen to receive the product which they spend almost a year to cultivate unless the grains of rice are kept in the barn. Some families do not have grains enough to consume all year around. Every year the tribesmen have to exchange their rice for what they need such as salt, clothings, medicines and others, excluding education for their children.
Each family can receive at most 500 muns of rice paddy or 30 sacks of milled rice a year. If the rice is sold, it can bring in not over 180,000 kip. Judging from the above reason, the tribesmen must grow other crops so that they can survive themselves in the jungle. Opium is one of the crops which the tribesmen grow be- side their rice field. Also opium will grow well if the weather in that year is pretty cool; if not the opium will die. Many other factors hamper the growing of opium, such as fertilized land, fog, etc. Supposed that the opium grows well in the fine circumstances, each family will get the product not over 6 Pong or 21⁄2-3 kilo- grammes which cost about 70,000 kip. The opium which the tribesmen grow will be able to support their families when the hard-time comes, the rice in the field cannot produce good product, the opium will be sold or exchanged for their neces- sities. The annual products are conclusively brought in about 250,000 kip in the good year for each family.
HOW THE OPIUM IN LAOS IS EXCHANGED
The opium is regarded a media of exchange between the tribesmen and the mer- chants in Laos. The methods of exchange can be made as following:-
Many big companies in Vientiane which import some commodities to sell in the country have to be taxed, and some of them are in debt. The commodities which the tribesmen or the population in the mountainous areas need are clothings, household utensils, medicines, etc. The merchants from such remote Khouengs as Namtha, Phong Saly, Xieng Khouang, Sam Neua, Muong, Xay, Nam Bak, etc. come into Vientiane to place an order of those goods from the big companies have to pay the companies in cash or in credit sometimes. The merchants in those Khouengs mostly sell the goods to the tribesmen, who come down from the moun- tains and do not have cash to pay. They normally use the opium they bring along with to exchange for what they need. What can the merchant do when they do not have cash to buy the goods in Vientiane? They, of course, have to wait until some men go up and buy the opium they receive from the tribesmen. The com- panies in Vientiane by no means do receive opium when the merchants do not have money to pay. What can the merchants do if no opium trader goes to buy the opium from them? The merchants will not come to buy goods from Vientiane and the tribesmen will not be able to exchange their opium for the goods, and everything will be halted, even the companies in Vientiane or the nation's economic as a whole. Year after year if the event repeats itself, how can the country of Laos remain? The government must inevitably face the economic crisis. The worst situation will come up in the hard year when the opium product cannot be in mar- keting. That means the year of death for all people of Laos.
Turning to the opium merchants who buy the opiums from the remote Khouengs, they send the opium to foreign lands for sale in various forms. They know that South Vietnamese in South Vietnam prefer "cooked" opium, they cook for them; they know Singapore and Malaysia prefer "raw" opium. they do as the markets want. In fact, the opium merchants have brought foreign exchanges into the country as well as various commodities. Ironically speaking, most of the opium merchants in Laos run their business in Saigon. South Vietnam, only, because the Saigon market needs the cooked opium at 1,200 kilogrammes or 2,400 kilogrammes of raw opium. Some years, the opium grown in Laos was not sufficient to meet the demand of the Saigon market, particularly