ELDERLY FEED OPIUM HABIT THROUGH MAIL

Many Immigrants Addicted To Drug

Every once in a while, like a gentle tap on the shoulder, Laotian war
refugee Chiem Saetern gets a little reminder of the old days. It's always a
bit of a surprise for the white-whiskered Saetern, now 72, but every so
often he catches the unmistakable scent of opium in the air. Most recently,
the pungent aroma hit the North Richmond man as he stepped into a friend's car.

"I've tried to encourage (friends) to stop, and some say they are trying to
quit, but I can't be sure," said Saetern, whose son, Kao Saetern, 47,
interpreted for him. "They believe if they stop the opium, they will die,"
he said. The physical withdrawal from opium is identical to that for
heroin, a more popular opium derivative. The condition can last five days
or more. And although quitting won't kill, it can make an addict feel next
to dead for a while. Saetern kicked the addiction during a two-year stint
in a refugee camp in Thailand, but thousands of his Hmong, Mien and Laotian
contemporaries now living in Northern and Central California are not as
fortunate. More than 30 years after the first wave of Southeast Asian
immigrants arrived in America, opium use is still strictly a mom-and-pop
operation. There is ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that most of the
immigrants still using opium are elderly. Many were born in the Golden
Crescent, a swath of agricultural highlands stretching from Burma to Laos
where most of the world's opium poppies are grown. Some, like Saetern, were
opium farmers who cultivated the cash crop and used it regularly. In recent
years, the adult children of elderly Southeast Asian addicts have
intervened and enrolled them in methadone clinics or drug rehabilitation
programs to help them break their drug habits. "We have adult children
bringing their uncles, grandfathers and mothers in here all the time," said
Alicia Hererra, director of the detox unit at The Effort, a Sacramento drug
rehabilitation program.

"They bring their (opium) pipes in and surrender them when they come in the
door," she said. The senior citizen addicts, who come from urban and rural
areas, make up about 20 percent of the patients admitted to the 10-day
detoxification program, Hererra added.

Opium is undeniably a part of Southeast Asian culture, and immigrants use
it as a pain reliever and cure-all, said Tseng Saecho, a counselor with
Asian Mental Health Services in Oakland.

"It's something you would offer a friend at your home," said Saecho. "Just
like a drink," he added.

Saecho's late father was a regular user in Laos, as were "pretty much all
my ancestors," he said.

These days, Saecho has about 10 clients, all elderly, who receive treatment
at a methadone clinic in North Oakland. One of the biggest hurdles he must
overcome initially is the stigma attached to looking for intervention from
outside the closed community, he said. "There is a shame attached to
seeking help," said Saecho. "It's considered a weakness, and you're
considered helpless. That's a big part of it," he added. Opium use among
elderly southeast Asian immigrants is widespread, with most using the drug
in their own homes as a cure-all for physical and emotional pain. And while
their younger relatives may purchase and, in rare cases, distribute the
drug, this is one drug problem that largely eludes the radar screen of most
police departments.

But that is hardly the case for U.S. Customs Service agents at the Oakland
mail facility, which processes more mail from Asia than any postal facility
in the nation.

In the early 1980s, there was so much opium being smuggled through the mail
that customs officers began referring to it as the Opium Mail Facility,
said Linda Burnett, a postal supervisor at an airmail plant in Daly City.
In a 10-day period in June and July 1999, according to statistics compiled
by the National Drug Intelligence Center, more than 800 pounds of opium was
seized at the Oakland mail facility.

But these days, it is more common to seize the drug in airmail parcels most
often shipped from Laos and Thailand in small parcels weighing no more than
two pounds, Burnett said. Varying amounts of the drug have been found in
picture frames, figurines, even small amounts hidden inside cassette tapes,
she said.

Most of the parcels are addressed to locations in Sacramento, Fresno and
towns and cities in Minnesota and Wisconsin, two upper Midwest states with
substantial Hmong and Laotian communities.

Airmail is the preferred smuggling method because packages tracked with a
routing number via the Internet are never claimed if they are held at any
one location too long, Burnett added.

Now that the opium harvest has begun in Asia, federal customs officers
expect to see smuggling pick up again.

But smugglers are hard to catch. Recipients of mailed opium have a way of
sensing when they're under police surveillance and can simply toss the
package in a closet and never open it, explained Tom O'Brien, a customs
field supervisor in San Francisco.

Even if a suspected drug user took the bait, attempting to prosecute an
elderly refugee with no criminal record is a next-to-impossible task, a
customs agent admitted.

Despite inroads made by drug counselors and programs that assist community
groups, the Hmong, Mien and Laotian communities remain closed communities,
where word of mouth means everything.

And some of his clients still turn to opium when methadone fails to dull
the emotional or physical pain.

"My community, the Mien, are close-knit and if one person seeks help and it
doesn't work, the word gets spread around," Saecho said.