Interesting article in today's
Sunset Times, covering the rise and rise of 'legal highs' including Spice.
LINK
This paragraph caught my eye:
John Huffman,whose original research into synthetic cannabinoids was the pump primer says
"
My wife looked up the compound JWH015 on Google. My compound was available as a growth stimulant for bonsai plants,which makes sense. But now it was a drug craze in Russia,then Europe,then it spread to the US and now worldwide"
Hmmmm.
Question: I read that during the Vietnam War, one of the ways the North Vietnamese demoralised and broke down unit cohesion amongst US forces was the deliberate supply of both marijuana and heroin to enemy troops.
Anyone got a serious source for this? @chippymick ?
Question: Spice and other legal highs are a serious problem in British prisons. What are the known links to organised crime in former Eastern bloc?
Any screw......er.....prison officers on Arrse who have a view?
Question : from an historical perspective,
what precedents are there for the use of recreational drugs as a destabilising influence?
Interesting times....
I am way out west currently and don't have access to my library.
Firstly, drug use in Vietnam, cannabis and heroin, was not a deliberate ploy by the cunning communists. It was by the turn of the 70th decade a consequence of US forces serving in a place where those plants grow like weeds. Plenty of supply.
Helped along by the 60's counter culture demand increased.
By 1971 it was becoming a significant problem in US units. It was never a serious problem in Australian units because in the 60's Australians were extremely conservative Country Cousins.
One of the remarkable things that I have seen reported is that even though heroin is reputably one of the most addictive drugs,
most US recreational users in Vietnam managed to kick the habit easily on return to the US.
The Vietnamese Communists have always been staunch opponents of both Cannabis and Opium. You can and will be shot for Heroin trafficking there.
That was not always the case. Prior to 1950 before Mao won the civil war and sponsored Uncle Ho, the Viet Minh were desperate enough to do a bit of drug traffiicking of their own.
The plan from 1945 to 1950 was to seize the opium crops grown out on the border with Laos, sell it to Chinese entrepreneurs and with the cash buy weapons in Bangkok. For whatever reason post war Bangkok became the centre of the black market for surplus WW2 weapons.
There is a school of thought that
Dien Bien Phu was fought in 1954 at that place for economic reasons. Control of a significant cash crop.
Once the Indochinese communist party gained state sponsorship from China and subsequently the USSR post 1950-54 they became extreme zealots against all drug production and consumption. A position they still adopt today.
That presented a big problem after the fall in 1975. Serving ARVN officers who couldn't escape were sent off to some really nasty re-education camps. Drug dealers were sent off to the nearest convenient wall and shot.
That lead to an interesting immigration problem for countries accepting what were then called "Boat People". Those with the greatest incentive to leave and the greatest resources to do so were the drug traffickers and dealers.
They were so successful in leaving Vietnam that they managed to create the Heroin Plague in Australia
and elsewhere in the 1980's. In the 1980-90's the Vietnamese were seriously over-represented in prisoner population to census data.
It was a massive social problem for at least a generation.
Nowadays, two generations on, that much maligned immigration tranche at the time is underrepresented in prisoners and overrepresented as doctoral candidates and bakers.
(Partly due to the the fact that heroin is no longer a fashionable drug but Meth is. Not an improvement but there will always be a market for recreational drugs. As kindly Uncle Ho well knew)
The Indochinese after a rough start have truly become a success story here in Australia.
Occam's razor needs to be applied here.
Was there a deliberate 'Commy' policy to undermine US performance in Vietnam?
The answer in spite of Hanoi hypocrisy has to be no.
Drug use in Vietnam and later in Countries that Vietnamese settled in is more adequately explained either situationally or economically.
Demand for recreational drugs will always be met.
"If there is a choice between deliberate government conspiracy and normal market forces go the market forces everytime. Governments and Public Servants are crap at running anything, anywhere for whatever reason"
I'm going to coin that Chippymick's Razor