Opium 101

Hmong farmer and his daughter in an
opium field

Our neighbor in Chiang Mai, Johann Facchini, took us on a number of trips to the mission station at Baw Gaew and in the process got us introduced to opium production. Generally, the Karen people we were to be mainly working with did not grow opium but many of the Hmong people did. Near the Baw Gaew station was a Hmong village that had many of the surrounding mountainsides planted in opium. Johann got to know some of the Hmong growers and arranged for us to visit during harvest time. We’re not experts, but this post shows what we learned.

Opium poppies are planted based on the rainy season. So they would be planted at the beginning of the rains, grow while being watered naturally from the rain, then harvested after the rains quit usually in late December or so. Opium thrived in the cooler weather of the higher elevations. It was also illegal, and the high country (no pun intended) was often remote and hard to access so opium was usually grown on steep mountain sides.

Seed pods after the petals have
fallen off

The fields might be hard to get to, but they were easily visible. The poppy plants were a paler green than most other crops and plants so the fields would stand out on the mountains where planted. In bloom, the fields were as beautiful as they were addicting.

After scoring, the seed pod would
ooze a white sap

When the flower petals fell off, the green seed pod would remain and it is the sap of the seed pod that is the raw opium. At the proper time, the farmer would come with a small, three bladed knife and score the surface of the seed pod in several places. Soon after scoring, the seed pod would begin to ooze a white sap. After a day or so, the sap would finish oozing and turn brown.

Opium sap after turning brown
ready to be scraped off

After turning brown, the farmer would return with a small scraper and scrape the sap off of the seed pod. The sap would be collected and shaped into “bricks” that would then be sold. The raw opium bricks would then be refined into heroin and trafficked internationally by some of the old generals and warlords from Chiang Kai Shek’s army, thus making the “Golden Triangle” famous.

Seed pod with opium sap scraped off

The opium was a cash crop for the farmer and family. Those growing opium were likely not self sufficient in rice and other food crops so they needed the cash to buy food and for general survival. So the opium farmers we met were not particularly wealthy.

With so much opium around, of course, addiction was rampant in Thailand. Even today, opium derivatives like morphine are still recognized as among the best pain killers and commonly prescribed. In the Thai mountain villages where medical care has been traditionally scarce or non-existent the pain relief qualities of opium were well known. And like everywhere, accidents would happen and injuries occur and villagers, with no medical care within reach, would turn to opium for relief. They could be addicted before the pain went away. Of course, peer pressure and the lure of getting high would also produce its share of addicts as well.

We would encounter opium addicts in village visits. Some would work on the irrigation projects we were involved in. Once or twice, we encountered an addict in crisis and took them to a hospital. We were also affected by a bomb blast caused by competing drug lords. But we weren’t directly involved in treating opium addiction or in crop replacement programs. In our later years in Thailand, while we worked in the TBMF office, Dick Mann started an addiction treatment program that was housed at the Baw Gaew mission station and other missionaries like Chuck Fox supported it by sending addicts for treatment. Like everywhere in the world I suppose, our work and life was affected by the drug trade to some extent or other even if we were not directly involved.