United Nations-supported development policies have focused on eradicating the production and trade of illicit drugs in South-East Asia. However, tensions between development initiatives and those seeking to control the trade have created changing, often unanticipated, patterns of drug consumption.

Since the mid-1990s, donor-funded alternative development programmes in Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) have attempted to reduce opium cultivation and use amongst ethnic highlanders. In addition to local consumption, they grew opium poppies as an economic buffer against rice shortages. Substitution projects were mostly unsuccessful until the government, backed by the United Nations, insisted on almost total eradication in 2003.

Highlanders have had to find alternative ways to make a living. In northern Lao PDR, this has prompted people to migrate to lowland areas in search of wage labour employment. At the same time, it has encouraged new forms of substance use that help highlanders to deal with lowland life.

Methamphetamine abuse has become widespread in many parts of Asia. Lao PDR highlanders take methamphetamines to help them deal with the pressures of their changing work environments and greater engagement with the market economy. The drugs are seen to provide more energy for long working hours.

The impact of development on drug consumption is often overlooked. The Nam Theun 2 dam project in Laos PDR is one example. Extensive social risk assessments considered the project's associated sexually transmitted HIV threat, but paid no attention to possible drug use. This is despite the dam being built close to heroin routes into Viet Nam, which is likely to attract workers from Viet Nam, where heroin injection is more common. AusAID has worked to promote safe injection in the Vietnamese provinces of Ha Tinh, Nghe An and Thanh Hoa.

Viet Nam provides clues as to what Lao PDR's post-opium HIV environment may resemble. Coinciding with regional geo-political changes, transport modernisation, the growth in plastic syringes and forced opium eradication, heroin flooded Viet Nam in the mid-1990s.

As in Thailand and Myanmar, the growth in heroin injecting in Viet Nam increased the risk of HIV infection. Seroprevalence rates among injecting drug users who tested positive for HIV in Viet Nam had been declining until 1996. However, rates rose to between 60 and 85 percent in several provinces as easy-to-use heroin replaced liquid opium, which had been injected by mainly older men. Development agencies were too slow in responding to the growing crisis. Fears are now growing about whether methamphetamine dealers will target Viet Nam’s young people.

Experiences from across South-East Asia suggest that:

• drugs must be placed at the centre of development agendas, rather than as part of less successful alternative development projects
• development planning must anticipate changing patterns of drug use within new risk environments rather than reproducing falsely optimistic goals of universal eradication.

Source(s):
'Relative Pleasures: Drugs, Development and Modern Dependencies in Asia's Golden Triangle', Development and Change 35(4), pages 909-935, by Chris Lyttleton, 2004 (PDF)
'Tackling drugs to reduce poverty', id21 insights health 10, February 2007

id21 Research Highlight: 23 January 2007

Further Information:
Chris Lyttleton
Department of Anthropology
Macquarie University
Sydney
NSW 2109
Australia

Tel: +61 2 98507783
Fax: +61 2 98509391
Contact the contributor: Chris.Lyttleton@mq.edu.au

Department of Anthropology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Patrick Griffiths
School of Applied Communication
RMIT University
Melbourne
Australia

Contact the contributor: Patrick.Griffiths@rmit.edu.au

School of Applied Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

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