Illicit drugs continue to be a danger for countries around the world, although there have been significant changes in the scale and control of drug trafficking and drug abuse since the āwar on drugsā was first declared by the president of the United States in the 1970s. South-east Asia is one of the worldās major drug-producing regions, centred on the Golden Triangle, which has an area of about 350,000 km2. In this complex border terrain over 1000 metres above sea level, far from administrative centres, official policies have been limited to seeking alternatives to poppy cultivation . According to United Nations reports, poppy cultivation in the Golden Triangle reached its highest level in 1998 at 130,000 hectares. By 2006 it had fallen to 20,000 hectares, but the acreage doubled in 2010, and just two years later it reached 50,000 hectares, accounting for 29% of world poppy cultivation (UNODC 2017, 2018). More than 90% of the area planted with poppies in the Golden Triangle is located in Shan State, eastern Myanmar, adjacent to Thailand and Laosāa mountainous and densely forested territory inhabited by Wa, Shan, and Hāmong tribes which has proved extremely advantageous for the cultivation and production of opium. From here, poppy sacks are transported to Kachin State to be made into various types of drugs (heroin and methamphetamine ) before being smuggled and trafficked to Yunnan province in China, Mea Sai province in Thailand, Luang Namtha and Phongsayly provinces in Laos, and beyond to other countries, including Vietnam. From fieldwork on the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) border, Chouvy (2013: 2) observed that:
As might be expected, the peninsular mass of mainland Southeast Asia is not only one of Asiaās historical major crossroadsā¦it is also famous worldwide as the site of the so-called Golden Triangle, one of the two main areas of illegal opium production in Asia and one of the largest in the world. But, insofar as illegal activities are concerned, contemporary mainland Southeast Asia is known not only as a locus of illegal drug production but also as a drug trafficking hub and a significant drug consumer market.
In the World Drug Report 2018, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that South-east Asia, especially the Golden Triangle border region between Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand, is the worldās second-largest opium producer, with 760 tons of heroin and about 20 tons of synthetic drugs worth about US$2 billion. This situation has presented the countries in the region with enormous challenges in the control and prevention of drug-related crimes.
At the same time, the unique geographical position of Laos and Vietnam has created one of the fastest gateways to the illicit drug trade in South-east Asia, if not the world. Both countries are under great pressure from drug production and trafficking in the area and risk becoming a drug transhipment area from the region to the world. It is a convenient place for organized criminal gangs to take advantage of drug trafficking to make unlimited profits. In recognition of this situation, in 1998 the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) signed the Agreement on Cooperation on Drug Control, Psychotropic Substances and Precursors with the government of the Lao Peopleās Democratic Republic (PDR). The body responsible for implementing this document in the SRV is the National Committee for AIDS, Drug and Prostitution Prevention and Control, while their counterpart is the Lao National Committee for Drugs Control and Supervision (LCDC), which has directed implementation of the bilateral and multilateral cooperation mechanisms on drug prevention and control. Planning for anti-drug cooperation between the two countries takes place at annual bilateral conferences.
However, drug-related crime in both countries remains complex. Even though hundreds of kilograms of heroin are trafficked every quarter from Laos to Vietnam, which is probably the largest heroin consumption market among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, there is a dearth of systematic academic research on the heroin trade in Vietnam. Although the reality of the politics of heroin in mainland South-east Asia, including Laos and Vietnam, in the 1970s has been described by McCoy (2003), little is known about the people behind the CBDT of heroin, the family-based organizations and fellow-countryman associations of the LaosāVietnam traffickers, and the characteristics of the heroin trade compared to those in the GMS and other parts of the world. This study, based on the authorās empirical research project (Ph.D thesis), endeavours to address some of these gaps by conducting CBDT case studies of multiple processes, principally in Vietnam but also partly in Laos. Supervisors at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, Australia provided support and guidance during I hold an Honorary Principal Research Fellow.
Theoretical Application
Narcotics present quick income-generating opportunities that appeal to those addicted to a life of crime, and to people marginalized by geography and ethnicity. Drug trafficking usually occurs through distributed networks of small-scale producers who supply raw materials to drug dealers for sale to affluent young users in Asian metropolitan centres and countries in North America, Western Europe, Africa, and Oceania. Cross-border networks tend to have a fluid structure with a sophisticated modus operandi that enables criminal networks/syndicates to achieve their goals. Evidence of similar CBDT practices can be found in Latin America, but TOC in the Asian region is a distinct category. CBDT entities operating across the VietnamāLaos border are different again from the Yakuza and Triad gangs that have traditionally characterized so-called āAsian crimeā. Localized groups in Vietnam are usually formed around bonds of kinship, local area, and being brought up in the same village, as well as language and ethnic identity, which in turn has a major bearing upon the organizational structure, internal relationships, and modus operandi of CBDT entities.
One of the more effective approaches used by LEAs t...