WESTERNERS FLOCK EAST FOR AN 'ASIAN TRIP'

Drug Tourism / In Laos, English Menus and New Opium Dens

VANG VENG, Laos---With a ring of opium grease starting to bubble around the
pinhole on the end of his pipe, the emaciated old man reclining on a pile
of dirty white pillows nods slightly to signal the liquid will soon vaporize.

His twig-thin arm slowly rotating the hollow metal pipe over an oil lamp
flame will produce the steady flow of smoke that has sustained his
half-century of opium addiction.

This time, however, he will not inhale.

Instead, the last in line of six young Western travelers Iying on the
wooden floor of his house a 22-year old blonde from California, reaches out
to smoke her first pipe of opium for the evemng.

"Oh, you're right, he really knows how to prepare a pipe," she leans over
to tell her friends after slowly exhaling toward the ceiling. "This guy is
so laid back it makes all the other places seem so commercial."

The boy preparing opium at Sisombat's Guest House the previous evening was
too inexperienced and, on the night before that, the Vietnamese in the
unmarked house opposite the temple had hurried her out too quickly after
smoking, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

She had not yet taken the tour pushed on patrons at Mr. Keo's
Restaurant---swimming and opium smoking on an underground beach in a nearby
cave---but she planned to head north with her boyfriend before the end of
their twoweek visit to smoke in the famed opium towns along the
Laotian-Chinese border.

Fueled by a recent flood of young Western travelers eager to test this
country's most famous local crop and export, opium dens are opening rapidly
and with apparent government impunity to serve tourists in northern Laos.

Laos is the world's third largest producer of opium, a narcotic whose
cultivation was encouraged by former French colonial administrators and the
medicinal use of which remains common for pain relief.

Medical experts warn that while opium is not as readily addictive as its
derivative, heroin, withdrawal symptoms are painfully similar.

Long criticized by the United States and other nations for weak
anti-narcotics laws, Laos outlawed opium smoking less than a decade ago.

Cheap visas on alrival and a national tourism promotion that began two
months ago have this year filled Laos with a record number of tourists and
created flourishing businesses to serve the new arrivals.

Many of Vang Vieng's 15 guest houses, almost all of which were built in the
last year, are being expanded and several new ones are under construction.
All of the newly opened restaurants offer menus in English.

Several opium dens, either rooms set aside in guest houses or unfurnished
wooden shacks along the dusty main road, send out young boys to so!icit
Western customers on the street each evemng.

Each pipe---first-time smokers usually start with five---cost 2,000 kip (33
cents). Combined with the $2 per night for a guest house and a few dollars
each day for food and beer, many travelers find it affordable to extend
their stay in Laos.

The exact number of foreign opium smokers in Laos is impossible to
determine, but conversations with young Western travelers suggest that many
have tried or intend to try opium at least once during their visit here.

In the last year, two young Westerners were flown out of the country on
medical emergency flights suffering from what diplomats said were
drug-induced comas.

Diplomats said the proliferation of opium smoking highlights the pitfalls
faced by a Communist government slowly easing restrictions on visitors to
one of Southeast Asia's most remote countries. It also demonstrates, they
said, the difficulty of controlling a drug that can be produced from plants
that thrive in mountains here.

The increasing consumption alarmed international drug control officials
enough to raise the issue with the Lao government late last year and just a
few weeks ago provoked tour operators in the historic city of Luang Prabang
to request a government crackdown on opium touts.

The venues catering to foreigners are concentrated in a handful of towns
and the amount of opium smoked by foreigners is still very small compared
with total national production and export, but international drug control
officials say they fear a serious drug-tourism problem has taken root.

"It is still too early to have any scientific study,. but rapidly mounting
anecdotal evidence indicates that we have a trend of increasing consumption
of opium by visiting foreigners," said Halvor Kolshus, the United Nations
Drug Control Program representative in Laos. ' 'I am worried that because
of this 'Visit Laos Year' promotion the government is not going to enforce
the laws and Laos will become known as the place for drugs among a certain
kind of tourist. "

Apart from an Italian in the northern town of Muang Sing who was locked up
overnight several months ago for disturbing the peace, there have been no
foreigners publicly charged under recently tightened anti-opium legislation.

TWO YEARS AGO, legislation was passed that made opium production illegal
and raised the penalties for consumption, trafficking and operation of
commercial opium dens to include stiff prison sentences.

"Of course we are against opium smoking, and we do not want anybody to come
our country to smoke it." said an aide to the Laotian National Commission
for Drug Control and Supervision. "We try our best."

In Luang Prabang, a city of temples that is the leading tourist attraction
in the country, opium is not pushed on tourists quite so openly as in Vang
Vieng. But some guest houses in the city have set up opium smoking for
guests and foreigners walking down dark streets at night are, on occasion,
discreetly asked whether they want to smoke a pipe.

"I can assure you this situation will not last," said a tour operator who
spoke on condition of anonymity. "National policies may not be so strictly
enforced in other parts of Laos, but here we will preserve the atmosphere
for the right kind of tourist."

The local Luang Prabang government, which recently stamped out the open
soliciting of black market exchange on city streets, will soon crack down,
he said, but no foreigners will be jailed.

"We will take very strong action against those Lao people who put
foreigners in contact with opium, " he said. "This is the Lao way of
dealing with the situation."

Diplomats and drug control officials said the current efforts are simply
not enough.

" Up in Muang Sing and Luang Nam Tha along the Chinese border, the amount
of opium tourism has got to the point where something really must be done,"
Mr. Kolshus, the UN official, said. "The saving grace is that only opium is
for sale now hut I am not sure how long that will last "