THAILAND SERVES AS A MODEL IN WAR AGAINST HEROIN

BAN HUAI SAI LUANG, Thailand -- By a gurgling stream in a remote mountain
hollow, a one-acre clearing has been hacked out of a forested slope. Red,
white and mauve opium poppies planted between charred tree stumps sway
silently in a cool breeze.

Then 10 black-uniformed soldiers, M-16 assault rifles slung over their
shoulders, break the idyllic quiet. Wading into the waist-high poppies,
they slash the plants with bamboo sticks.

Every year, Thai army units guided by satellite imagery are sent to remote
spots in this corner of Southeast Asia's drug-producing heartland -- known
as ``the Golden Triangle'' -- to destroy opium crops, the source of heroin.

Reporters were taken along recently on the latest operation in Chiang Mai,
a province 360 miles north of Bangkok that was once a prolific opium area.

In praise reiterated in a just-released U.N. World Drug Report, Thailand
has won international acclaim for its success in reducing opium production.
It has relied largely on rural-development projects that encourage poor
hill-tribe farmers who have traditionally grown opium as a cash crop to
grow fruit and vegetables instead.

``Thailand has been the most successful country in the world in cutting
opium production over the past 30 years,'' said Sandro Calvani, East Asia
and Pacific representative at the U.N. International Drug Control Program
(UNDCP) in Bangkok.

According to Thai figures, 825 acres of poppy plants were planted
nationwide in 1999, yielding an estimated 3.7 tons of opium resin. That
compares with 30 tons a decade ago and 145 tons 35 years ago.

Neighboring military-run Burma, also known as Myanmar, produced an
estimated 895 tons of opium in 1999, making it the world's second-largest
source after Afghanistan. Laos produced 124 tons.

A measure of Thailand's success -- made possible with $800 million in
foreign aid over the past 30 years -- is that it is now a net importer of
opium, Calvani said. The country's biggest drug menace is now
methamphetamines trafficked from Burma.

But lingering poverty in remote upland areas of northern Thailand has made
total eradication of poppy cultivation an elusive goal. Prices have
increased as the area planted in poppies has shrunk, so the temptation to
grow remains great.

``Hill-tribe people here say that they can get more for a haversack of
opium than for a pickup truck full of cabbages,'' said Lt. Col. Prakit
Sornsuwan, who has been stripping opium fields the past 18 dry seasons.

The price for 3.5 pounds of opium resin -- a weight unit known by hill
tribes as one ``joy'' -- has risen from 40,000 baht ($930) last year to
60,000 baht ($1,395) this year, he said.

Farmers now try to hide opium crops from aerial surveillance by planting
poppies in rows to look like cabbage patches or by concealing them among
wild sunflowers that naturally color the mountainsides, Prakit said.

Forty soldiers of his 36th Regiment in Thailand's 3rd Army Division have
been given the assignment of destroying 325 acres in Chiang Mai province
this opium season, which runs from September through February.

They trek through forest to opium plots mapped by satellite and remote
sensing provided by the UNDCP and the United States.

Traditionally, opium was used by hill tribes not just for pleasure but as a
supposed cure-all medicine. Its use has dwindled in recent years as road
networks and health care have gradually improved in remote communities.

Opium takes about two months to grow and is collected by piercing the bulb
of the poppy plant to make white sap drip out. After the sap dries, the
resulting brown resin is scraped off by hand.

The resin can be processed into heroin, but Thailand's crop is thought to
be smoked mostly by local addicts.

At Ban Huai Sai Luang, about two miles from the opium field destroyed in
this operation, deputy headman Pakeh Laksanti said that if the rutted dirt
road to the village remained passable and the price of the cabbages they
cultivate was good, people would not grow poppies.

But he noted that right now, cabbages sell for the equivalent of just over
3 cents a pound.