NEW MUSEUM ILLUSTRATES DEADLY HISTORY OF OPIUM

IT HAS inspired artists, turned criminals into millionaires and destroyed
countless lives across the world.

Now opium has spawned a museum in the heart of the Golden Triangle, the
Thai region where more than half of the world's heroin is produced.

Although yet to open officially, the ?6 million Hall of Opium has attracted
thousands of schoolchildren, Thai and foreign tourists to the Mekong river
village of Sop Ruak, where the frontiers of Thailand, Burma and Laos converge.

Visitors to the museum can trace the history of the drug from opium's first
written mention in 5,000-year-old Sumerian texts to the present day.

"The hope is that with insight, youth - the group most at risk today - will
stay away from drugs. We hope a visit to the Hall of Opium will imbue them
with the determination to fight against drugs," said Paveena
Viriyaprapaikit, the project's director.

Visitors enter the museum through a 150-yard tunnel, its dim lighting,
eerie music and bas-reliefs of wraith-like figures evoking both suffering
and easing of pain, as well as the Golden Triangle's danger and mystery.

The exhibits, spread over 60,300 sq ft, end with a Hall of Reflection, a
sunlit room of Zen-like simplicity inscribed with sayings in praise of
moderation and humanity's striving for good.

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 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.

"We tried to present a fair picture of opium, both its advantages for
humans and its dangers. That was difficult. Usually it's so demonised,"
said a US researcher, Charles Mehl, who led a team of prominent Thai
academics in creating the museum.

Among the most dramatic exhibits is a long, narrowing passage representing
the descent from initial euphoria of drug users to great suffering and
blasted talent.

Photographs of the rock king Elvis Presley, comedian Lenny Bruce, soccer
star Diego Maradona and others who fell prey to drugs hang in a Gallery of
Victims.

"Any musician who says he is playing better on tea, the needle, or when he
is juiced, is a plain straight liar," reads a quote under the photo of the
jazz great Charlie Parker, who died at age 35 from heroin abuse.

This year, some 100,000 students are expected to visit the museum, which
plans to expand its education efforts.

Mr Mehl said he hopes that by the time they leave the museum, both Thais
and foreigners will be better able to evaluate the risk of narcotics and
make the right choices.