000316; G.F. 316
SECRET SE*Z
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The Illicit Traffic
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The opium product for the illicit traffic derives primarily from Burma and Thailand with emphasis on the former. Laos today is believed to be mainly a transit country for Burmese opium, morphine and heroin in movement to Thailand, and to a much lesser extent to South Vietnam. The comparatively small amount of the drug grown in Laos in the areas outside Government control appears to be absorbed by local demand.
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Reduced to the most basic and general terms the illicit traffic operates along the following lines. Opium trafficking begins when middlemen, many of whom are ethnic Chinese, purchase raw opium from the producer tribesmen in the remote mountainous areas where it is grown. From there it is transported along jungle paths by porterage or animal convoys to collection points in the border regions where some of the raw opium is refined into morphine and heroin, the remainder being left in its raw state. At this stage the opium and its derivatives are sold to buyers who arrange for their onward transportation across the long and virtually uncontrolled frontier into Thailand or Laos if the purchase is from Burma, and then by one means or another south- wards to Bangkok and its general vicinity where it is stored. In the case of a purchase being of Thai origin, of course the trans-border snuggline applicable to the Burmese products does not arise, but otherwise the pattern of southward movement by divers means to Bangkok and its environs is the same. Consign- ments may be diverted from the major Bangkok stream at an early stage to meet the requirements of the South Vietnam trade, particularly if transit is being made through Laos, but this has waned with the substantial rundown of American troops in that country. Until a consignment has left the rugged tri- border zone where the writ of Government in most instances does not run, or at best can only be regarded as tenuous, it is closely protected by well armed Chinese Irregular Forces, the remnants or descendants of the Kwomintang troops who were driven out of China in 1949 and who settled either in Burma or in Thailand, or by armed guerilla or insurgent groups, or simply by gangs of armed bandits. All these have a vested interest in the illicit traffic and its perpetuation.
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It is from Bangkok and the southern coast of Thailand that export overseas to South East Asian markets takes place, including Hong Kong. While some morphine and heroin may be smuggled into the Colony directly by air from Bangkok, or from other places in Indo-China served by international air routes, the substantial Hong Kong market receives nearly all its supplies of opium and morphine base by sea from Bangkok, or from other adjacent places along the south Thailand seaboard. Heroin can be subject to deterioration when travelling by sea and is not often imported by ship into Hong Kong. The Colony's heroin requirements are manufactured locally from morphine base following its arrival. No case of the complete refining process from raw opium to heroin has ever been detected in Hong Kong. The reasons for this are probably economic, to which must be added the problem of the disposal of a considerable amount of waste matter which
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