THE HORROR AND HOPE OF OPIUM

SOP RUAK, Thailand - A British clipper ship hauls bales of opium
to emaciated Chinese addicts as sailors belt out rollicking sea
shanties. ''What a wonderful world,'' croons Louis Armstrong among
stark images of movie stars, musicians and other celebrities cut down
by drugs in the prime of life.

These multimedia tableaux form part of a harrowing and ultimately
moving museum set in the very heart of the Golden Triangle, origin of
more than half the world's heroin and a haven for traffickers.

Set in a lush, mist-streaked forest, the museum, which has yet to be
officially opened, may well be the country's finest. It is already
attracting thousands of schoolchildren along with Thai and foreign
tourists to this Mekong River village where the frontiers of Thailand,
Myanmar and Laos converge.

Paveena Viriyaprapaikit, the project's director, hopes the $10-million
US steel-and-concrete Hall of Opium will also become a leading
international centre for research into opiates.

Visitors enter through a 140-metre tunnel, its dim lighting, eerie
music and bas-reliefs of wraithlike figures evoking both suffering and
easing of pain, as well as the Triangle's danger and mystery.

The exhibits end with the Hall of Reflection, a sunlit room of
Zen-like simplicity inscribed with sayings in praise of moderation and
humanity's striving for good. ''Our greatest glory is not in never
falling, but in rising every time we fall,'' reads one from Confucius.

In between, the story of opium and its derivatives, morphine and
heroin, is told in vivid set pieces, video films, photographs and
written commentary.

The cargo hold of an 18th century British ship carrying opium, an
early 20th century opium den in Thailand and scenes from the Opium
Wars of the 1840s in China are carefully reconstructed. More recent
times furnish exhibits of how smugglers stuff drugs into teddy bears,
soak shirts in heroin or swallow condoms packed with narcotics.

Exhibits depict the Golden Triangle's warlords, corruption and
bloodshed, but American researcher Charles Mehl says the displays also
make clear that narcotics came to the region relatively recently and
are not inextricably linked to the impoverished hill tribes that grow
the opium poppy.

The first written mention of opium, the museum's historical section
notes, is found in Sumerian texts going back 5,000 years. The
Egyptians indulged in it for pleasure and some ancient Romans used
toxic doses to poison their enemies. The moguls of India fed it to
their war elephants to calm them in battle.

Before anesthesia and aspirin, produced in 1900, opium and morphine
relieved the physical agonies and minor pains of millions, even though
the drugs were sometimes misused. A 19th century American
advertisement praises an opium-based ''Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup
for children teething'' while makers of a morphine mixture advised
wives to keep wayward husbands at home by stirring it into their coffee.