The Lao PDR - What does being "drug free" mean?

Interviewed by several researchers, most of the Lao PDR law enforcement officers present at a 2012 workshop “did not understand the concept of harm reduction and confused it with supply reduction. When asked about harm reduction, they referred to the establishment of drug free villages and villages without criminal offences.” (Sychareun & al., 2012) This recollection, although seemingly anecdotical, is actually both quite representative of the importance of the concept of “drug-free” and of the way drug-related matters are handled in the country.

If you walk among the streets of Laotian cities, you will regularly see dark blue signs painted with white letters letting everyone know that this locality has achieved the distinguished label of being "drug free" (a "village" or "ban" being the smallest administrative divisions of Laos). But what does it means? Where does it come from? While there is no official definition of the concept, tne answer is to look upon the inspiration directly taken by countries of the region from the ASEAN drug control agenda (1). Itself arguably, at least in its present form, a subsequent result of the 1998 UNGASS world “drug-free” goal.

The Lao PDR government “initiated the plan to make Laos drug free by 2015 in 2008, during a speech to mark International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking“ which “was triggered by the 2000 Accord ASEAN Accord and China Cooperative in Response to Dangerous Drugs, set in Bangkok, Thailand.” (Vientiane Times, 2015) In line with UNGASS 1998, the Lao PDR “government discourse and the UNODC discourse was that you had to get rid of illicit substance because it was causing poverty, both at a macro level and an individual level, by debilitating addicts.” (Al Jazeera, 2014).

In 2014, while the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) was held in Vientiane Capital, a document from the Lao PDR National Commission for Drug Control and Supervision (LCDC), titled “Enhancing Parliamentary Cooperation for a Drug Free ASEAN Community - Report on Drug Situation in Lao PDR’’ was presented during the 11th Meeting of the AIPA Fact-Finding Committee (AIFOCOM).

This report described the current situation of “drug-free zones” in the country: “We have paid attention to developing a drug-free environment for families, villages, and educational institution by mainstreaming the effort with 3 levels of decentralisation strategy known as “3 Builds”. Currently, nation-wide, there are 2655 drug-free villages or about 30.97% of total villages, in which Vientiane Capital has developed 302 drug-free villages accounting for 62.79 % of total villages in Vientiane Capital. In addition, education and sports sector has actively developed 543 drug-free secondary schools accounting for 37.90% of total number of secondary schools nation-wide. Generally speaking, (…) there will be more solidarity, security and order.” (AIFOCOM, 2014) This statement from the drug control Lao PDR governmental organization is itself quite revealing. A year only before the 2015 dateline fixed by the ASEAN to be entirely “drug-free”, the Lao PDR had only managed to succeed in labelling as such, a third of its total targets, mostly in the most urban areas of the country. But how can you achieve something if the parameters of your target are unknown? As we will see, the concept itself remains quite slippery for the government and citizens of the country.

A 2015 workshop on management of substance abuse and mental health, organized at the Vientiane Institut Pasteur by the World Health Organisation (WHO), can in this regard enlighten us on the - absence - of meaning of the concept for drug-related observers. Several pertinent questions were raised by Dr Alex Wodak, Director of the Alcohol and Drug Service, at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney, Australia: “What does “drug-free” actually means? Is it free of all drugs? Including coffee and cigarettes, or just prohibited substances for reasons going beyond local cultural specificities?”

The need to question that distinction made between drugs is indeed fundamental as the answers can often be considered somehow arbitrary and ideologically driven. The harm reduction specialist added: “How can we have treatment for people suffering from substance abuses in these zones if it supposed to be drug free?" To these - mostly rhetorical but pertinent - questions, no answers were provided. Indeed, as several foreign envoys were present at the meeting, including representatives from U.N. local agencies and the Australian and Singaporean embassies, Lao PDR officials, for whom the workshop was initially intended, were awkwardly absent from the meeting (2).

• So how does the system work?

Explained by Lao PDR law enforcement officers to several drug policy researchers, the notion of what is to be a “drug-free" villages remains seemingly at the discretion of the law enforcement personnels in charge of the specified locations: “We have a policy to create villages without drugs based on four basic standards (no drug users, no drug dealers, no drug production and no persons hiding drug users) and 11 other activities.” (Sychareun and al., 2012) Villages are then recognized each year with or without drugs. The status, if obtained, giving rewards and incentives to administrators in charge, such as the village chief. Arguably, the system is not clearly delimited, but observations have led to believe that the intended process has driven users into further stigmatization and marginalization from their villages population. What might even be more troubling is attached to the very foundation on which the concept is based: inter-citizens denunciations and official incentives to do so.

• The denunciation process:

Australian anthropologist Paul Cohen, whose researches in Laos are set in the 1990’s, expressed that “the denunciation of addicts dates back to the US' “war on drugs” in the 1970s, and intensified in the 1990s, when Laos' government, through a UN-backed programme, sought to demonise opium as a cause of hardship rather than a symptom.” (Al Jazeera, 2014) Today, either in regard to “drug-free zone” or so-called “drug treatment centers” (which we will discuss in upcoming articles), the government heavily relies on the cooperation of citizens willing to provide information on trafficking, consumption and production of prohibited substances.

In this regard, the LCDC opened in October 2002 a call centre, with regular announcements published in local newspapers, to “gather all the information on drugs provided by Lao citizens either by telephone, letter, fax or other means.” (Bertrand, 2004) Initially, people seemed to mainly call to denounce drug dealers in urban centers and small scale producers in rural areas (3), but a growing denunciation trend now concerns consumers, often by members of the family nucleus. The government intends to mobilize people, notably through the village chief which can reward good citizens depending on the information they provide. In return, the village chief is him- or herself rewarded in regard to the quantity of people that are being denounced and which can potentially ultimately bring to the village the desired status of being “drug-free”.

In the press, the solution of the problem is seen as a purifying disposal process, to which the good citizens are invited to participate in order to distinguish themselves from bad elements (Bertrand, 2004). As such, the “drug-free” scheme can be presented as a double pyramidal process with flux from both ends. The citizens report to their closest local government representative, which in turn will report to the district authorities, the governor office and eventually the office of the Prime Minister. With each new “drug free” zones declared, each agent and the administrative zone they represent will receive financial and social incentives.

Drug-free schools work on the same principle. By expelling students and achieving the "drug-free" schools status, administration personnel will be awarded by public demonstration of exemplarity - such as a diploma and medals - funds for class equipment and teachers will receive certificates. The processes are repeated each year and the status can be removed in conditions that are not extremely clear. We could only assume that the need to keep the desired label could be an incentive for the administration in charge to hide or not report actual drug-related cases.

Among the few details that are available, even to UNODC, it seems that being “drug-free” can often remain a political slogan, but with disastrous consequences. It remains actually quite difficult to find anyone who will actually tell you what it means. In its simplest form, it is about testing as many people as possible, and those who test positive are removed from zones that can then be labeled as being “drug-free”. These people being later sent for “treatment” within specific centers. In the larger sense, it represents the influence of international drug control policy, regional integration and a one-solution fits all take on drug consumption. However, while publicly presented as a show of the state willingness to deal with the matter of drug consumption in a 'strong' manner, it seems that nonetheless, “drug use and trafficking continue in the so-called drug free villages.” (Vientiane Times, 2015b)

The concept of Compulsory Drug Detention Centres (CDDCs), - which will be the topic of the next set of articles - is part of the same prohibition-driven policy that institutionalized the “drug-free” component, although with much more tangible but equally questionable results.

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(1) Most notably by the “2000 Accord ASEAN Accord and China Cooperative in Response to Dangerous Drugs”, and the ASEAN “drug-free” 2015 goal.

(2) The LCDC also cancelled at the last minute a meeting with Dr Wodak, scheduled a few days before in which he was supposed to present information on harm reduction to representatives from several Lao PDR ministries, including the Minister of Health (MoH).

(3) Interview LCDC personnel, 20/10/2015.

• (AIFOCOM, 2014) ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, “Enhancing Parliamentary Cooperation for a Drug Free ASEAN Community’’, The 11th Meeting of the AIPAC Fact-Finding Committee (AIFOCOM) to Combat the Drug Menace, Landmark Mekong Riverside Hotel Vientiane, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Report on Drug Situation in Lao PDR 11th AIFOCOM, Vientiane Capital, 12-14 May 2014, http://www.na.gov.la/docs/AIPA/aifocom11/Doc_for_AIFOCOM/COUNTRY%20REPORT/%2810%29%20Annex%20L-%20Country%20Report%20of%20Laos.pdf, Accessed: 21/03/15.

• (Al Jazeera, 2014) D. de Carteret,"Laos' forgotten opium addicts", Al Jazeera, May 30, 2014,http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/05/laos-forgotten-opium-addicts-2014526111840418596.html, Accessed: 21/03/15.

• (Bertrand, 2004) D. Bertrand, “Le combat contre la drogue en RDP Lao : une analyse à travers la presse, 1998-2003”, Moussons 2004, pp. 95-114, http://moussons.revues.org/2493, Accessed: 12/04/15.

• (Sychareun & al., 2012) V. Sychareun, V. Hansana, S. Phommachanh, V. Somphet, P. Phommavongsa, B. Tenni, T. Moore, and N. Crofts, “Defining and redefining harm reduction in the Lao context”, Harm Reduction Journal, 2012; 9: 28, Published online 2012 Jul 9. doi 10.1186/1477-7517-9-28, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3404925/, Accessed: 13/07/15.

• (Vientiane Times, 2015) K. Latsaphao, "Will ASEAN become drug free in 2015?", Vientiane Times, Oct 16, 2015.

• (Vientiane Times, 2015b) S. Pongkh, "How greatly must Laos suffer at the hands of drug traffickers?", Vientiane Times, Oct 23, 2015, http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/how-greatly-must-laos-suffer-at-the-hands-of-drug-traffickers-vientiane-times#, Accessed: 22/10/15.