For a Drug-free Society

[OKKAR66127@xxxxxxx]

For a Drug-free Society
Perspectives, The NLM, Thursday, 26 March 1998

Drugs do not make a healthy society, nor create an atmosphere conducive to
productivity.  Instead, drugs foul up any normal society and create the
kind of atmosphere that brings negative effects.

Unfortunate as it is that Myanmar is identified as part of a producer
region from where opium and its deadly derivatives spread to other parts of
the world, we are today doing what is possible to gradually rid our
territory of identity with drugs, having launched a multi-sectoral national
campaign.

Myanmar is part of the so-called Golden Triangle, a misnomer that is
mistranslated to smear our good image.  Whenever the term Golden Triangle
is mentioned, we ask "What's so golden about it?" and whether the opium
poppy cultivators, or the refiners or the pushers on the streets of certain
capitals benefit from trafficking in hard drugs.

To get to the root of the problem, we have to look at the origin of drugs
introduced into Myanmar.  We were a drug-free society under our own
sovereigns till the colonialists came, cashing in on the opportunity to
make their serfs drug-dependent and subservient.

Those who were addicted through eating raw opium or smoking it became
unable to contribute their service to the well-being of their families much
less to that of society.

Then came the time when stragglers of the Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist
Chinese Army) infiltrated into northern Myanmar under the CIA's plan to use
them against the new mainland Chinese government when they saw convenient.

The KMTs took to intensified opium cultivation and stayed on as unwanted
intruders till we took the case to the United Nations after attempting to
oust them.

The threat of narcotic drugs would not have ballooned into such a
proportion as we see today if it had not been for the British who first
introduced it and the Americans who, in their bid to keep the KMT in
Myanmar, billeted them on our domain.

Concerted efforts under the auspices of the Central Committee for Drug
Abuse Control, proper legislation and strict measures have paid favourable
dividends.

Many of the poppy cultivators have benefited under crop substitution or
income substitution deals struck by the border areas and national races
development programme.

Mongla Museum highlights our anti-drug programme, with Mongla itself a
drug-free zone, all because of our efforts for a drug-free society.



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