international trade. This 400 tons, however, serves as an important reserve supply to lowland dealers because growers can be induced to sell part of what they normally consume if offered an increase in price.
In normal years, some 300 tons of opium are brought to collection centers in northern Thailand, Burma, and Lacs near the triborder point, where it is processed and packaged for distribution to wholesale centers in Vientiane, Bangkok, and Hong Kong. The final customers are mainly the large opium- and heroin-smoking communities which exist in most big cities of Southeast Asia. Smoking is the main form of ingestion in Asia; injection of heroin is practically unknown.
Before the development of the large market among U.S. troops for heroin in South Vietnam, sales of Southeast Asian opium or heroin to non-Asians were very small. Prior to 1970, these sales probably amounted to less than 10 tons of opium equivalent annually and con- sisted mainly of high-quality, injection heroin (No. 4 heroin) pro- duced in laboratories in Hong Kong and Bangkok for sale to inter- national traffickers who came there to buy the contraband. In 1970 and 1971, Southeast Asian dealers began processing large quantities of white, high-quality heroin for U.S. servicemen in Vietnam. This market declined sharply after June 1971 as a result of U.S. troop withdrawals together with stringent U.S. programs to inhibit the use of heroin by U.S. servicemen. Whether the big Asian heroin dealers will be content to revert to their pre-1970 situation, when trafficking in No. 4 heroin was a minor sideline for them, or will continue production of this high-quality heroin with the intention of moving it to the United States on a large scale is not known. In any case, it is wikely that the dealers will give up their traditional opium-trading activities which have been profitable, relatively dependable, and safe sources. of income.
Thus, while Southeast Asia presently constitutes a secondary source of our drug problem, as drug control efforts improve elsewhere in the world, it looms as a much greater potential source of supply. Certainly with the eventual drying up of Turkish opium, there will be pressure for illegal traffickers to turn increasingly to the Golden Tri- angle. The U.S. Government is fully aware of the danger of South- east Asia's becoming a major source of heroin for the U.S. market. We are giving priority attention to narcotics control programs with the governments of Southeast Asia. In 1972, we centered a significant share of our suppression efforts and resources there as we stepped up our cooperative programs in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, the Philip- pines, and Hong Kong.
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