Tongpoh Singya, 80, a farmer in Laos, now grows rice, sunflowers, pumpkins and other crops. But four years ago, before the authorities destroyed them, his land was full of poppy fields. (Thomas Fuller/IHT)
Notorious Golden Triangle loses sway in the opium trade
By Thomas Fuller
Published: September 11, 2007
BANNA SALA, Laos: Fields of brightly colored opium poppies, Corsican gangsters and the CIA's secret war: The mystique of the Golden Triangle clings to the jungle-covered mountains here like the morning mist.
But the prosaic reality is that after years of producing the lion's share of the world's opium, the Golden Triangle is now only a bit player in the business.
Three decades ago, the northernmost reaches of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar produced more than 70 percent of all opium sold worldwide, most of it refined into heroin. Today the area averages about 5 percent of the world total, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
"The mystique may remain, and the geography will be celebrated in the future by novelists," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN anti-drug agency, in an interview. "But from our vantage point, we see a region that is rapidly moving towards an opium-free status."
The Golden Triangle has been eclipsed by the Golden Crescent - the poppy-growing area in and around Afghanistan that is now the source of an estimated 92 percent of the world's opium, according to the United Nations, which bases its statistics on satellite imagery of poppy fields.
The shift to Afghanistan has led to a near doubling of global opium
production in less than two decades because Afghanistan is a much more efficient opium producer. Poppies are grown in fertile valleys of southern Afghanistan where they yield on average of four times more opium than in the less hospitable soil of upland Southeast Asia, UN data shows.
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