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develop new smuggling routes, but there is no evidence to suggest that it has had anything other than the most minimal effect on the traffic as a whole. Certainly a year of S.N.O. has made no difference at all to the availability of drugs on the streets in Hong Kong, or the price of drugs in the Colony. The Americans intend to double the size of S.N.O. and open four more posts, including two in the southern peninsula of Thailand. Even with this increase S.N.O. will only have a strength of about one hundred Thai Officers engaged primarily on intelligence collection duties with a view to mounting seizure operations, a very small number in relation to the terrain and the vast distances involved.
19.
The senior B.N.D.D. Officer in charge of S.N.O. at Chiang Mai believes that the unit can do no more than make a dent in the illicit traffic. He is of the view that it will not stop it or reduce it substantially to manageable proportions. I fully share these opinions. I received the impression from talking to the Thai Major-General Commanding S.N.O. that the Thais go along with the Americans in this matter because they have little option to do otherwise, but that their hearts are not really in it and they do no more than they have to. To have a serious hope of succeeding in breaking the opium horse convoys, etc., S.N.O. would need to be supported by large field forces patrolling and ambushing the jungle tracks and these simply are not available.
JON
20.
The American Embassy in Bangkok is clearly under great pressure from Washington to stop the illicit traffic in opium products out of Thailand to the United States and by implication to Hong Kong en route to the United States. It is apparent to the American Embassy that despite their best efforts they are not succeeding in this task and are making little real progress towards the desired goal. Opium and morphine base smuggling by trawler continues on an extensive scale, the B.N.D.D. Regional Director admitting to me that he had been quite unable to get to grips with it or make any impression upon it. In casting about for a solution to the international trafficking problems emanating from Thailand, some Americans in Bangkok appear to be attracted increasingly to the concept of preemptive opium buying to be run in harness with the strictest possible law enforcement and crop substitution programmes, unpalatable though such a project would be in certain political circles. This is simply another permuta- tion of an opium monopoly. There seem to be good grounds for a joint Anglo-American examination in depth of the opium monopoly/ preemptive buy idea to see whether the hoped for advantages out- weigh the obvious several disadvantages and whether it is worth proceeding with or not.
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