The Health Ministry has allegedly cut HIV/Aids-related funds this year, potentially leaving thousands of infected patients to fend for themselves.

KUALA LUMPUR: Six years ago, Suzy (not her real name), was forced through difficult circumstances to become a sex worker.

Her family was out of money, riddled in debt and her father was suffering from gout. Back then, Suzy (now 31) had no other choice. She is a transgender.

Because of her sexuality, no “normal” company would hire her. She would remain jobless since she left school.

“Yes (it was my choice to become a sex worker)…I had to take care of my family,” the shy Suzy, told FMT. “I had to take care of our debts. My father is sick. He has gout. It was very difficult to find a job.”
After a short stint as a sex worker, Suzy was taken in by the HIV/Aids NGO Women & Health

Association of Kuala Lumpur (WAKE) in 2006.

She would eventually become an outreach worker there, handing out condoms and lubricants to sex workers, as well as giving counsel to HIV-infected people.

Safe sex and HIV prevention were some of the topics she would tell her 377 “clients” from time to time.

But in a few days, Suzy (and many other HIV-outreach workers like her) will lose her job. She faces the prospect of selling herself on the streets again.

This is because the money for these NGOs, allocated to them from the Health Ministry, has been cut.

In early January this year, the ministry supposedly cut a large portion of its yearly funds to the Malaysian Aids Council (MAC).

The MAC acts as an umbrella body to several HIV-treatment NGOs across the country, distributing the ministry’s approved funds since 2006.

This year however, it has left several of these NGOs out of the loop, forcing some of them to sack their workers.

No reason given

Suzy’s manager Muhammad Daruz told FMT that the ministry did not give a reason why it stopped approving funds for WAKE’s HIV prevention work, even though it had been steadily funding them since 2007.

“Every year, we submit our proposal (for the funds), but this year we’ve been told that it was not approved…There was no reason. It was not approved, and that’s it,” he said.

According to Muhammad, the cut funds meant that he had to see many of his people go by the end of February.

“If we have no funding, how are we going to pay them?..Of course (we’re not happy), they’ve been with us (for so long), but (now) they won’t have any income,” he added.

But the biggest losers from this change, Muhammad said, were the thousands HIV/Aids-infected clients, who had no one to turn to because of this money cut.

These included Malaysia’s sex workers, transgenders, drug users and children born with the deadly virus.

NGOs claim that there as many as 91,362 cases of HIV infections in Malaysia, as well as over 60,000 sex workers.

The cut funds came as a shock to many of the NGOs, who felt that the government’s support and funds in recent years has helped to curb HIV infections.

In a March 2010 media report, Deputy Health Minister Rosnah Abdul Rashid Shirlin was quoyed as saying that Malaysia had seen a drop in HIV cases, as compared to a decade before.

According to the MAC’s website, Malaysia recorded 3,652 HIV cases in 2010. In 2001, the number of cases that year was 5,938.

Johor HIV-outreach worker Ita (not her real name) feared the worst with the government supposedly cutting these funds.

Speaking on her work at Intan Life Zone (her NGO), Ita warned that the HIV virus could spread if there was no money for these outreach workers.

“We need to help (the HIV-infected), and we need the budget for it. We’re not a business, and we can’t earn back the money for this every month.”

“If we can’t run the NGO, we cannot give (clean) needles to (drug users),” she said, adding that many drug users tended to share needles.

Ita said that this might cause the HIV virus to spread amongst drug users, and in worst-case scenarios, on to their wives and children.

She also defended her NGO’s work, saying that it was not encouraging drug use, but keeping the HIV pandemic in check.

Seeking a meeting

Malaysian Aids Council president Mohd Zaman Khan

Malaysian Aids Council president Mohd Zaman Khan told FMT that the ministry’s funds this year fell short of previous years.

He also confirmed that not all the NGOs had been affected by the cut. “Some, not all…The budget (for 2012) has been approved, but has been short of what we asked for.”

“We were told of the amount, and they (ministry) told us some of the project was approved and (some) were not approved.”

“Of course we don’t expect (a lot) to be given. We expected a cut, but we did not expect such a cut that tends to affect our ability on the ground,” he said.

Zaman was however reluctant to disclose how much this cut, or the total approved budget was.
Nevertheless, he told FMT that the MAC had – very soon after it saw the cut- sent a letter to Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai asking for a meeting on the matter “as soon as possible”.

He added that some NGOs did not seem to record a good performance, whilst others did not submit reports back to the MAC for the ministry to check.

Even so, Zaman said that he would consider bringing up the matter with Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak if the meeting with the ministry did not end satisfactorily.

When contacted, the ministry was unavailable for comment.

Courtesy: FMT News

21/02/2012

Police on Tuesday arrested a suspected leading supplier of a major drug trafficking network in the South and seized about four million baht worth of illicit drugs.

Sakorn Kaewrod, 25, was apprehended after a 50-strong team of narcotics suppression unit and border patrol police raided his home in Kong Ra district in Phatthalung.

Officials searched the house and discovered 10 grammes of crystal methamphetamine, or “ice”, 98 rounds of live ammunition for an M16 assault rifle and a carbine rifle and a bankbook containing records of transactions worth millions of baht.

Police claimed the suspect later admitted that he had hidden more illegal drugs in a 20-litre oil barrel floating in the swamp behind his house. Police found in it a total of 16,000 methamphetamine pills and1kg of ice.

Police alleged Mr Sakorn was a member of a large drugs ring that has clients in all 14 provinces in the South. His role in the gang was to collect and deliver drugs to customers and handle drug money, they said.

He received “orders” from an inmate identified as Lah, who is incarcerated in Phatthalung Central Prison.

The suspect visited Lah, who has connections with other drug inmates in Bangkok’s Bang Kwang Central Prison, three times a week to report to him progress in the sale of narcotics, police said.

Courtesy: Bangkok Post

By David Washington
Published on February 21, 2012

After Whitney Houston’s sudden death last Saturday, Tony Bennett didn’t hesitate to publicly make the link to drugs that many suspected. At a Grammy pre-party, the 85-year-old addict in recovery stated: “First it was Michael Jackson, then it was Amy Winehouse and now the magnificent Whitney Houston. I’d like to have every gentleman and lady in this room commit themselves to get our government to legalize drugs.”

Some point out that the problem with Bennett’s statement is that it directly links the deaths of three famous musicians to the prohibition of drugs, which isn’t exactly the case. The drugs that killed Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse (and likely Whitney Houston if the prescription medication bottles found in her room are any indicator) were all legal. Jackson and (quite likely) Houston overdosed on prescription drugs prescribed by doctors while Winehouse died of acute alcohol intoxication.

Nevertheless, though legalizing currently illicit drugs wouldn’t affect the availability of prescription medication or alcohol, Bennett’s treatment for the recent rash of celebrity ODs is spot on. Jackson, Winehouse and Houston were undoubtedly all chronic drug addicts and died because of it, despite having the means to seek treatment. But considering the social stigma that relates drug use and addiction to weak willpower and poor morals, who can blame them? Society’s demonization of drug addiction prevents addicts from admitting their own problems and hinders or prevents them from seeking treatment. This is especially true for celebrities who often have all their actions in the spotlight, whether they want them to be or not.

Legalizing drugs could also help to alleviate the issue of drug overdoses by allowing recreational drug users, who prefer currently illicit drugs, access to the prescriptions they abuse to indulge in their vices. Though it seems like increasing the number of people using currently illegal drugs would increase the number of people who overdose, there are several seldom-considered factors that increase the risk associated with prescription drug abuse:

1. Prescription drugs lack the taboo that illicit drugs have. Many prescription drug abusers consider it “self-medication” rather than drug abuse and addiction. This perpetuates their denial if they develop a dependency.

2. Popping a pill is easier than smoking a joint or snorting a line. Many avoid recreational drugs because the route of administration often involves an unfamiliar activity like smoking, snorting, or injecting a substance. Ingesting a pill is a task that the majority of Americans have done countless times before.

3. The medical industry wants to ignore the issue. Pharmaceutical companies don’t want their products to be linked to the negative social effects of addiction because it would likely decrease their profits. Doctors who over-prescribe medication have the same incentive.

It isn’t hyperbolic to call prescription-drug abuse the next crack cocaine. The sale of opioids (drugs like OxyContin, Demerol and Vicodin) increased by more than sixfold between 1997 and 2006. During that same period, overdose deaths increased by a factor of 2.6.

You could add more names to the list of OD’d celebs. Singer Brittany Murphy. Comedian Greg Giraldo. Playmate Anna Nicole Smith. Drummer James “The Rev” Sullivan. It’s an epidemic. And Tony Bennett’s recommendation to fight fire with fire by legalizing illicit recreational drugs may be the only way to slow it.

David Washington is a second-year political science major.

Courtesy: Daily Nexus

Medpage Today

By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today
Published: February 20, 2012

Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planner

More Americans now die from hepatitis C infection than from HIV, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

The rate of HIV deaths has been falling while the rate for hepatitis C has been rising and the two curves crossed each other in 2007, according to Kathleen Ly, MPH, and colleagues.

———————————————————————————–
Action Points
Note that before 1990, HCV infection had only a 10% cure rate with early interferon monotherapy. In 2011, HCV-specific protease inhibitors combined with pegylated interferon and ribavirin achieved close to 70% sustained virologic response rates for patients with genotype 1 infections.
Note, however, that HCV now exceeds HIV as a cause of mortality in the U.S.
———————————————————————————–
In that year, they wrote in the Feb. 21 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, 12,734 deaths were blamed on HIV, compared with 15,106 attributed to hepatitis C.

The analysis, based on death certificates from 1999 through 2007, also showed that the death rate for hepatitis B has been falling slightly, although it was the underlying or contributing cause of 1,815 deaths in 2007.

The figures probably represent “only a fraction of a larger burden of morbidity and mortality from viral hepatitis,” Ly and colleagues argued, noting that chronic hepatitis infection — both B and C — is most prevalent among people born from 1945 through 1965.

Most of those with the disease do not know they are infected and they are now reaching the age where they are at risk for hepatitis-related diseases and death, they noted.

Indeed, in 2007, 73.4% of hepatitis C-related deaths were among people ages 45 through 64, while 59.4% of hepatitis B-related deaths occurred in that age group, they found.

Ly and colleagues cautioned that someone other than the primary physician often completes death certificates, so that they may not be completely accurate. But the effect of that bias, they noted, should be roughly the same over time and so should not affect the trends.

Also, they noted, viral hepatitis was often not detected and thus not reported as a cause of death.

The findings come at a time when the treatment picture for hepatitis C is changing rapidly, as a range of new direct-acting agents is approved and comes to the clinic.

Before 1990, HCV infection had only a 10% cure rate with early interferon monotherapy. In 2011, HCV-specific protease inhibitors combined with pegylated interferon and ribavirin, achieved close to 70% sustained virologic response rates for patients with genotype 1 infections.

Within five years, it may be possible to achieve 90% cure rates using combinations of the new agents, according to Harvey Alter, MD, and Jake Liang, MD, both of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

“What is currently lacking in this optimistic perspective is a national ‘find-and-treat’ policy” to reduce the burden of the disease, they argued in an accompanying editorial.

Preventing the long-term consequences of hepatitis C – liver disease and cancer – “is now achievable if our collective will can evolve as rapidly as our pharmacologic skill.”

One possible step forward would be a change in screening policy for hepatitis C, according to David Rein, PhD, of the social science research organization NORC at the University of Chicago in Atlanta, and colleagues.

Currently, the CDC recommends antibody screening for people with such risk factors or indicators as a history of injection-drug use or elevated alanine aminotransferase levels.

But one-time screening and then treating people based on birth cohort – specifically those born from 1945 through 1965 – would be cost-effective, Rein and colleagues argued in a companion study in the journal.

Their analysis showed that birth-cohort screening identified an extra 808,580 cases of chronic infection, compared with the status quo, at a cost of $2,874 per case.

Depending on the form of subsequent treatment, the screening would prevent between 82,300 and 121,000 deaths, with an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio per quality-adjusted life year gained ranged from $15,700 to $35,700, Rein and colleagues calculated.

———————————————————————————–
The analysis of hepatitis C burden was supported by the CDC. The authors are employees of the agency.

The analysis of birth-cohort screening was supported by the CDC. Rein did not report any financial links with industry. Several authors are employees of the CDC.

The journal said the editorial authors made no disclosures.
———————————————————————————–
Courtesy: Medpage Today

The HCLU is fighting the proposal of the government to criminalize more young people for drug related offences

By Andrew R.C. Marshall

Mon Feb 20, 2012

TAR PU VILLAGE, Shan State, Myanmar (Reuters) – In Myanmar’s new war on drugs, meet the weapon of mass destruction: the weed-whacker.

Its two-stroke engine spins a metal blade, which is more commonly deployed to tame the suburban gardens of wealthy Westerners. But today, in a remote valley in impoverished Shan State, Myanmar police armed with weed-whackers are advancing through fields of thigh-high poppies, leaving a carpet of stems in their wake.

When the police are finished, their uniforms are flecked with a sticky brown sap harvested from these flowers for centuries: opium. Myanmar produced an estimated 610 tonnes in 2011, making it the world’s second-biggest opium supplier after Afghanistan, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The area under poppy cultivation has doubled in the past five years.

A policeman holds poppy plants after a field was destroyed above the village of Tar-Pu, in the mountains of Shan State January 27, 2012. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

Now, emerging from half a century of military dictatorship, Myanmar says it wants to buck that trend.

Since taking power a year ago, the nominally civilian government of President Thein Sein has launched a series of political and economic reforms. It has also dramatically accelerated a campaign to eradicate opium poppies and shed Myanmar’s pariah status as one of the world’s top drug producers.

Myanmar officials allowed a Reuters reporter and photographer to visit former conflict areas in remote Shan State to examine the campaign, marking the first time in decades that Western journalists were able to report freely in the region.

The five-day journey with the UNODC and local police came as Myanmar appeals to foreign donors for half a billion dollars to finance a program it says will wean 256,000 households off poppy-growing over the next three years.

WIPED OUT BY 2014?

“Every year the international community spends millions of dollars (on anti-narcotics initiatives) in countries like Afghanistan and Colombia, and the outcome is not satisfactory,” Sit Aye, senior legal advisor to President Thein Sein, said in an interview. “Here, with international assistance, we guarantee to wipe out the opium problem by 2014.”

Moe Mohm, 48, an ethnic Pa-O widow with six daughters whose poppy field was destroyed, sits in her house in the village of Kyauk Ka Char, in the mountains of Shan State January 26, 2012. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

It is an ambitious goal. Police, soldiers and villagers armed with sticks and weed-whackers have destroyed 21,256 hectares (52,525 acres) of poppy fields since September, more than triple the area eradicated during the previous growing season, according to Myanmar’s Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control (CCDAC). This has potentially prevented almost 30 tonnes of heroin, opium’s most notorious derivative, from hitting the world market, according to calculations based on UNODC statistics.

But opium had been harvested from some poppies before they were destroyed, Reuters found. And while more poppy is being destroyed, more is also being grown: the total area under cultivation will likely rise by about 10 percent between 2011 and 2012, the UNODC estimated. This suggests that, with or without foreign assistance, Myanmar’s three-year target is unrealistic.

Most opium produced in Myanmar comes from Shan State, a rugged and lawless region bordering China, Thailand and Laos. It is part of the Golden Triangle, which is probably named after the gold once used to buy opium. Here, and in neighboring Kachin State, poppies thrive not just on cooler weather and higher altitudes, but on poverty and conflict.

For half a century, Myanmar has been torn apart by fighting between government forces and various ethnic rebel groups ranged along its borders, where people have endured the worst human rights abuses.

The United States recently upgraded diplomatic ties with the long-isolated Southeast Asian nation after Hillary Clinton’s historic visit there in November, the first by an American secretary of state since 1955. But the U.S. and European countries regard Myanmar’s making peace with its long-suffering ethnic minorities as a key condition for lifting crippling economic sanctions.

Forging a lasting peace is arguably Thein Sein’s toughest challenge, and it is complicated by opium. As in Afghanistan and Colombia, the drug trade has long fueled conflict in Myanmar, providing cash to buy weapons and a lucrative product to fight over. Opium and conflict were so intertwined that one problem could not be solved without the other, said Jason Eligh, UNODC country manager for Myanmar.

“The path to peace is lined with poppies,” he said. “We must address that.”

Jason Eligh (C) of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and other representatives meet farmers in the village of War Taw, in the mountains of Shan State January 27, 2012. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

Recent peace talks between the government and ethnic rebel groups — including two factions of the Shan State Army — have allowed poppy eradication in what were once no-go areas for the Myanmar authorities. But the ceasefires were fragile, and a poorly managed eradication campaign could cause them to unravel.

ALTERNATIVE CROPS

Chopping down opium poppies is the easy part. Helping former poppy-growing families develop alternative crops and livelihoods is complicated and costly.

In Afghanistan, on the other side of the Himalayas, opium production is so vast and sophisticated that it resembles a legitimate agribusiness in some areas. But in Myanmar, poppies are produced mainly by subsistence farmers who depend upon the cash opium generates to buy food.

About 256,000 households are involved in opium poppy cultivation, the UNODC estimates. The opium yield from an acre (a third of a hectare) of Myanmar poppy is worth about $1,000 (629.76 pounds). That’s a life-saving sum of money in Myanmar, where a third of its 60 million people live on a dollar a day.

“The rapid elimination of opium poppy creates serious problems for these households,” Eligh said. “You have people who couldn’t harvest their poppies, who don’t have any money, having to survive for the next five or six months with almost nothing.”

Alternative crops can’t be planted until the rains come in June or July. “We’ve got a very narrow window,” Eligh continued. “If they don’t get help during that period, then there is a very real chance that they’ll go back to poppy.”

The UNODC argues that the ceasefires create a rare opportunity for the international community to help Myanmar tackle its opium problem — and, by extension, its civil war. The CCDAC is asking the international community for $524.48 million to develop alternative livelihoods for poppy-growing households.

Getting it will be an uphill task. Thanks to sanctions, Myanmar receives less humanitarian aid per capita than almost any other poor country.

“After 1988 we were sanctioned and banned by Western countries,” said Police Colonel Tin Maung Maung, the most senior operational officer in the CCDAC. “We got no assistance from them.” Without outside help, he said, “We cannot do it. We need international support.”

BLESSING AND CURSE

Myanmar’s strategic location is a blessing and a curse. As it emerges from nearly 50 years of isolation and misrule, the country’s long borders with China, India and Thailand grant access to Asia’s most dynamic economies. They also make it a regional hub for manufacturing and distributing narcotics.

It shares a porous 2,100-km frontier with China, where 2.2 million users consumed 45 tonnes of mostly Myanmar heroin in 2008, said the UNODC.

Shan State is named after Myanmar’s largest ethnic minority. The road east from its capital, the former British colonial hill-station of Taunggyi, is a ribbon of blacktop unfurling through rice fields and bustling market towns. At the roadside, Buddhist novice monks in maroon robes held out bowls to solicit donations. This reporter traveled in UN vehicles sandwiched between trucks carrying armed police. Their presence was not ceremonial.

Last July, outside the nearby town of Loilem, a rebel group called the Shan State Army (South) ambushed a Myanmar police convoy, killing six people, reported the Shan Herald Agency for News, a news service run by Shan exiles in Thailand. Shan rebels and a government militia belonging to the Pa-O, the state’s second-largest ethnic group, clashed regularly.

Hostilities subsided in December after the SSA (S) signed a ceasefire, but men with guns still roam this restive region. UNODC regional chief Gary Lewis described Shan State as “a swirling and often toxic mix of money, guns and drugs.”

CHEROOTS, TEMPLES AND GARLIC

The Pa-O are devout Buddhists, known for growing poppies and building beautiful temples. At the village of Kyauk Ka Char, the first stop in the five-day tour of the state, the temple was the grandest structure in a community of simple wooden houses with rusting tin roofs.

Inside, three giant Buddha statues smiled down upon a group of villagers waiting to greet their rare visitors: Lewis and Eligh from the UNODC, and Police Colonel Myint Aung of the CCDAC. The villagers wore turbans, in the Pa-O style, and smoked cheroots and chewed betel nut.

Lewis delivered a stark message. “The days of poppy are finished,” he told the villagers, before asking what help they needed to grow only legal crops.

Nobody said a word until a local schoolteacher, who was translating between Pa-O and English, urged people to talk freely without fear of arrest. The authorities had destroyed their poppies once before, in 2005, and given them no compensation or assistance.

Growing alternative crops wasn’t easy, said Aung Tun, 40, a father of four. Many people grew cordia trees, whose leaves were used to make traditional Myanmar cheroots. But the recent influx of cheap Chinese cigarettes meant that fewer people smoked cheroots, making the leaves increasingly unprofitable.

“We tried growing garlic and sugar cane but there was no market for it,” Aung Tun said. “We lost everything we invested.” Garlic fetched such a low price that some Pa-O villages left it to rot in the fields.

Transporting these crops to market was also a problem. Poppy-growing villages such as Kyauk Ka Char are remote, with unpaved roads only passable in the dry season. By contrast, the market for opium was guaranteed and transport wasn’t an issue.

Most farmers grew two crops. The first, which accounted for three quarters of the annual opium yield, was planted in September or October, and harvested about three months later; then a second crop was planted. Areas with good irrigation could even plant a third.

During harvest season Chinese-speaking traders on motorbikes toured the villages and paid cash for opium. “You don’t even have to take the crop to market,” said Eligh. “The market comes to you.”

POPPY DEBTS

Moe Mohm, 48, a single mother of six daughters, had borrowed 300,000 kyat ($350) from a Taunggyi moneylender to buy fertiliser for her poppies, which were recently destroyed. “I just wanted to cry,” she said.

With her cash crop gone, Moe Mohm couldn’t repay the loan or even the interest on it — a crushing 8 percent per month. She had no way to grow rice until the rains came, and no cash to buy it. “We know your need is great and more help is required,” Lewis told her. “We will act on it.”

On the way back to Taunggyi, Eligh called a colleague at the World Food Programme and an emergency supply of rice arrived in Kyauk Ka Char less than three weeks later. More rice was bound for other villages nearby.

The UNODC has three projects aimed at current and former poppy-growers in Myanmar. Located in the Shan townships of Hopong and Loilen, the projects offered a range of assistance: developing alternative crops, improving the land with irrigation and fertilisers, providing microfinance to landless households, setting up cash-for-work programmes, vaccinating livestock, and building roads and clinics.

This is funded with $7 million from the European Union, Germany and Japan. It was “barely enough” to help 10,000 of the 256,000 households involved in opium poppy production, Eligh said.

When the poppy fields of War Taw, a village in Loilen township, were destroyed, the UNODC gave people tools, seeds and agricultural training. But this help was not enough to stop War Taw’s young men and women from leaving for Thailand, where an estimated 2 million Myanmar people now work, most of them illegally.

With the poppies gone, that exodus could accelerate. Nang Khae, a 49-year-old poppy-grower, reckoned about 60 villagers — a tenth of War Taw’s population — worked in Thailand. Her 29-year-old daughter left for Bangkok five years ago to work as a maid and never returned. Three months ago, her teenage son left too.

“It breaks our heart to watch them go,” said Nang Khae. “But we had to borrow money to buy food and can’t pay it back. That’s why we send our children away.”

TRADITIONAL MEDICINE

Poppy eradication removes not just a cash crop but, for many hill-tribes, a medicine. The villagers of Kaw Mong Pyin, an isolated village in Eastern Shan State populated by ethnic Akha, regard opium as a life-saving traditional remedy. “We’ve used it since our ancestors’ time,” said Asan, 43, a poppy-grower who was raising 10 children and 20 oxen.

Asan’s village felt untouched by modernity. The women wore elaborate headdresses hung with coloured beads and silver coins dating back to British colonial times. Pigs slumbered beneath wooden houses with thatched roofs.

When his cattle got sick, said Asan, he fed them a mixture of ginger, garlic, salt and opium. The villagers also baked opium with garlic to treat their own diarrhoea, a life-threatening illness in remote areas. Without opium, he said, the villagers would need basic medical help for their families — the nearest hospital was a five-hour walk away. “We only use a little,” said Asan. “Too much makes you dizzy.”

But another pressing health issue is opium addiction, which is rife among hill-tribes such as the Akha. “Every time I go home I start smoking again,” said Abo, 49, a long-time opium smoker being treated at a government clinic in the Shan town of Kengtung. “No poppies are grown in my village, but opium is very easy to buy.”

POPPY PROLIFERATION

The weed-whackers destroy not just fully grown poppy plants, but also a hard-to-spot second stage of seedlings which some farmers plant between them. “This year’s opium crop will be greatly reduced because of these tools,” said Police Colonel Win Naing, Shan State’s chief of police.

UNODC officials agreed, but cautioned that eradication wasn’t the only factor influencing the season’s total production.

One was bad weather. In many parts of Shan State, heavy rain had washed away poppy seeds or damaged young plants. This alone might have halved the yield before eradication began.

Another factor was the total area under cultivation, which had risen by at least 10 percent between 2011 and 2012, estimated the UNODC. In other words, although more poppies had been destroyed, more had also been planted.

A third factor became apparent outside Kyauk Ka Char, where a poppy field the size of a soccer pitch lay strewn with stems. These were felled in a recent operation but, as tell-tale marks on their bulbs revealed, not before some of the opium was harvested.

This suggested that the ongoing eradication campaign might not reduce the total yield by as much as the Myanmar authorities had hoped.

The poppy-farmers of Kyauk Ka Char might have received a tip-off. More likely, the police had simply arrived too late. Since 2006, China’s National Narcotics Control Commission has given Myanmar satellite maps to help locate and destroy poppy fields. But Shan State police said they have gotten no other international assistance, and were hampered by lack of personnel and equipment.

Many fields were so remote and well-hidden that not even satellite maps were much help. “Sometimes, we have a map but still can’t find the field,” said Sai Aung Kyaw Win, 39, a veteran UNODC surveyor who spends months trekking through Myanmar’s poppy-growing areas. “We just walk around in circles.”

INTERNATIONAL ACCEPTANCE

Neighboring Thailand was proof that alternative development worked, the UN’s Eligh said, although it took more than 30 years and a billion dollars to halt large-scale poppy-growing there. Thailand still produces about 5 tonnes of opium every year, despite dispatching troops on regular poppy-eradication missions. This fact alone suggests that Myanmar’s bid to eradicate opium in just three years is fanciful.

But the target of 2014 was chosen for a reason: that year, for the first time, Myanmar will mark its growing acceptance by the international community by chairing the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN), a position it was denied six years ago amid Western uproar over its human rights record.

One potentially embarrassing UNODC survey map showed dense poppy cultivation only a few hours’ drive from Myanmar’s capital Naypyitaw, where ASEAN and world leaders will gather in 2014.

ASEAN has declared that its 10 member states will be “drug free” by 2015, an equally fanciful target considering the region’s soaring use of methamphetamine.

Better known in its pill form as ya ba, it is also manufactured in huge quantities in Shan State. When asked whether poppies or pills were the bigger law-enforcement challenge, Pol Col Tin Maung Maung of the CCDAC replied, “Both are a great problem for us.”

(Editing by Bill Tarrant)

Courtesy: Reuters

These latest developments reflect the government’s shift towards greater criminalization and, most worryingly, disregard for human rights, that harm reduction and drug policy reform advocates fear will inevitably accompany their latest war on drugs. Many are concerned that the disastrous effects of Thaksin’s 2003 ‘war on drugs’ will be repeated. I spoke with Karyn Kaplan, Policy and Development Director for the Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group (TTAG), to get her opinions on the latest developments:

What are your greatest concerns about Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm’s new proposals?

We are gravely concerned that Thailand is flaunting its human rights obligations in the name of drug control. The application of the death penalty under human rights law is reserved for the severest offenses, of which drug dealing is not considered one. Not only should Thailand abolish the death penalty, but it should immediately and publicly reject Deputy PM Chalerm Yubamrung’s request to expedite the death penalty in drug offense cases.

What will be the immediate impact for drug users? What do you think the longer-term consequences will be?

People who use drugs in Thailand continue to live in fear, in particular of police abuse, arrest and compulsory drug detention. The devastating effect of this well-founded fear is that it drives people who use drugs further underground and away from support and services, including harm reduction services. In the long term, higher blood-borne virus transmission rates, incarceration rates, and resultant disease and death are the obvious consequences.

How will these proposals impact the work of harm reduction groups?

Proposals such as Chalerm’s illegal claims galvanize grassroots groups working to improve the health and human rights situation of people who use drugs. Our civil society network, called 12-D for the dozen or so HIV/drugs groups working together, has already sent a letter of request to meet Dep. PM Chalerm in order to send our message and educate him on the benefits of harm reduction and humane drug policy, for Thai society and the individual user. We have many additional advocacy strategies in the case that the government continues to fail to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of this segment of society.

What steps should harm reduction and drug policy reform advocates take in light of these developments?

We have numerous recommendations depending on the issue at hand, but in terms of the death penalty, many civil society groups are against it, especially its use in the context of drug offenses. We want Thailand to abolish the death penalty. At the same time, we see that decriminalization of people who use drugs as the only solution for truly scaling up effective harm reduction services and reducing the high incidence of police abuse and incarceration of users.

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Mon Feb 20, 2012

(Reuters) – Most people in Thailand’s drug rehabilitation centres are there for using it. Most drug arrests in Japan are related to it. And Vietnam, the United Nations says, is its “next big market.”

Methamphetamine is now the top drug in many Asian countries, its soaring popularity straddling social and economic divides. It is widely known in pill form by its Thai name ya ba (“crazy medicine”) and in its purer crystalline form as ice or shabu. It is relatively cheap, highly addictive and — because its main source is former poppy-growing areas of Shan State — another daunting front in Myanmar’s war on drugs.

The number of ya ba pills seized in Southeast Asia quadrupled from 32 million in 2008 to 133 million in 2010, and that is only a fraction of what’s being produced, says the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Myanmar’s record is patchy — only 2 million pills were seized there in 2010 — but officials blame China, India and Thailand for supplying the drug’s main ingredients: ephedrine and pseudoephedrine.

Most pills are made in semi-autonomous areas such as Special Region 2, a once opium-rich region bordering China. It is controlled by a well-armed ethnic cease-fire group called the United Wa State Army, which has been described by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as “the leading heroin and methamphetamine trafficking organization in Southeast Asia.”

Most of Myanmar’s methamphetamine is trafficked to other Asian countries. But with a growing domestic market, its popularity in Myanmar might already have eclipsed opium and heroin, says the UNODC.

(Editing by Bill Tarrant)

Courtesy: Reuters

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An interview with Eugene Jarecki, Director of the Sundance award-winning documentary “The House I Live In”. In this fascinating interview, Jarecki talks eloquently about the ‘War on Drugs’ and describes how the documentary will be used to advocate for drug policy reform:

Watch the video clip by clicking here

Read similar interview at Huffington Post
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Courtesy: Movie City News, Huffington post and Global Drug Policy Team