Opium Eradication in Laos

Opium has played and important role in the Lao society for almost 200 years. During the colonial administration, opium was used as a means of labour exploitation and socio-economic development obstruction by allowing free addiction among ethnic groups. Since then, the opium poppy cultivation started to steadily increase in the Northern provinces of the country and thus making Laos the third largest producer of illicit opium in the world.

In 1998 there were 27.000 hectares under opium poppy cultivation producing 120 tones of heroin and about 63.000 opium addicts.

At the end of 1999 the National Strategy Programme aiming to eliminate opium poppy cultivation by the year 2006 has been jointly developed by the Lao government (Lao National Commission for Drugs Control) and the UNODC. Some core activities within the specific timeframe have been undertaken since 2000-2005, which could be summarized as follows:

  1. Establishment of Ad Hoc drug control organizations at national and local levels
  2. Assimilation and grasp on Party’s policy on opium poppy cultivation elimination in Laos which includes alertness and volunteriness of the people
  3. Establishment of contracts between local administration and opium poppy farming households
  4. Implementation of integrated Rural development Projects to replace socio-economic incentives to produce opium with the support of international agencies and friendly countries such as UN, ADB, PR China, US, Germany and others.
  5. Detoxification and Rehabilitation of opium addicts
  6. Law Enforcement
  7. Fund Raising and International Cooperation.

I am pleased to inform the meeting that through hard-works and arduous efforts, the Laos government has declared on 14 February 2006. In addition to this declaration, the government has managed to reduce the number of opium addicts in just 12,000, largely through treatment and education.

Despite these optimistic statistics, risks and challenges remained that the opium cultivation could creep back if donor countries axed support and if former opium farmers now growing cash crops such as cabbages or asparagus were not given access to international markets. Therefore it is necessary to ensure everlasting sustainability of the elimination of opium cultivation in the Lao PDR. Some core actions have to be undertaken are as follows:

  1. Create awareness and educate people
  2. Each level of government should consider the detoxification of addicts as its priority task by 2006.
  3. An investment at certain level is necessary for maintenance of roads and other infrastructure for the creation of sustainable alternative sources of livelihood in favour of former opium farmers
  4. In the next 2-3 years, each level of Administration will have to verify the hidden resumption of poppy opium cultivation in remote areas
  5. Fund raising schemes are pushed forward at local and international arenas to enable the implementation of integrated rural development projects, which aims at addressing poverty alleviation of former opium farmers and addicts.

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