THAI OPIUM MUSEUM SHOWS HORROR, HOPE

SOP RUAK, Thailand (AP) - 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. Indian moguls 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.