The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia

The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia is a non-fiction book on heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia, which covers the period from World War II to the Vietnam War. Published in 1972, the book was the product of eighteen months of research and at least one trip to Laos by the principal author, Alfred W. McCoy. McCoy wrote Politics of Heroin while seeking a PhD in Southeast Asian history at Yale University. Cathleen B. Read (a graduate student who spent time in the region during the war) and Leonard P. Adams II are also listed as co-authors.

Arguably, Politics of Heroin's most notable feature was its documentation of CIA complicity and aid to the Southeast Asian opium/heroin trade. Along with McCoy's Congressional testimony, this initially controversial thesis gained a degree of mainstream acceptance. The thesis of the book was that most of the world's heroin was produced in the Golden Triangle.

It is transported in the planes, vehicles, and other conveyances supplied by the United States. The profit from the trade has been going into the pockets of some of our best friends in Southeast Asia. The charge concludes with the statement that the traffic is being carried on with the indifference if not the closed-eye compliance of some American officials, and there is no likelihood of its being shut down in the foreseeable future.

In particular, Air America, covertly owned and operated by the CIA, was used to transport the illicit drugs. At the same time, the heroin supply was partially responsible for the perilous state of US Army morale in Vietnam. "By mid 1971 Army medical officers were estimating that about 10 to 15 percent of the lower-ranking enlisted men serving in Vietnam were heroin users."

Having interviewed Maurice Belleux, former head of the French intelligence agency SDECE, McCoy also uncovered parts of the French Connection scheme used by the agency to finance all of its covert operations during the First Indochina War through control of the Indochina drug trade.

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