The effects of Chinese growth on raw material quantities and prices are well known. But on the drug trade? Here too the Chinese elephant moved with disastrous effects in the china shop of drugs. The United Nations Office of Narcotics has announced in a very recent report that opium cultivation in Southeast Asia has more than doubled in the past six years, driven by the demand for heroin from China. The number of heroin users in East Asia and the Pacific has risen from one-fifth to one-quarter of the world's total, and about 70 percent of these are in China.
Most drug trafficking goes through the Golden triangle, an area three times the size of Italy that covers the mountainous territory where Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand converge. The UN, together with the local authorities, is trying to convince the farmers to give up the cultivation of opium poppies. But those territories are often controlled by the insurgents, especially in Myanmar, and in any case the alternatives offered - switching to other crops - are insufficient: the yield of a poppy field is about 15 times higher than the yield of a 'cash crop' alternative.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204707104578090614285930862.html
