G. F. 323
CONFIDENTIAL # #
- 8
機密
INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS
Opium Production
21.
Hong Kong does not grow any opium producing poppies: raw opium and crude morphine (which is opium from which most of the impurities have been removed chemically) are smuggled in illegally from elsewhere. The former is turned into prepared opium for smoking by a boiling process, whereas the latter is converted into heroin by acetylation in makeshift 'laboratories' set up for the purpose. Heroin is a poor traveller and is not usually imported in this form. The quantity smuggled is a matter for conjecture but perhaps amounts to 35 tons of raw opium and 7 to 10 of morphine products. These figures must, however, be treated with reserve.
22.
About 1,500 tons of opium are produced legally each year, under strict controls, to meet the world's pharmaceutical requirements. It is believed that in addition some 1,400 tons are produced illegally, perhaps half of it being grown in the Kachin Hills and Shan States in Burma, in northwest Laos and in northern Thailand, in a contiguous area known as the golden triangle. Although much of the opium cultivated in this remote area is consumed by those who grow it, a large clandestine export trade flourishes. Hong Kong's supplies of opium products originate there.
23.
Controlling this production and destroying the export trade are neither simple nor easy tasks. But they are essential prerequisites to stopping the abuse of opium and heroin in Hong Kong.
24.
In April 1971 a United Nations Fund for Drug Abuse Control was established. The United Kingdom Government has made a contribution to it. Its financial
CONFIDENTIAL #