Opium for thee, but not for me!
Opium. It is a beautiful flower the poppy, from whence this poison originates, which makes it all the more horrifying to see the effects that such a deadly drug has upon its users, who waste away in their dens more like animals then men. The capitalists and the imperialists have long used Opium as an attempt to crush the spirit of the East Asian peoples, fighting wars to force our Chinese brothers to take it, and using it as a base for their revenue and for their oppression in Vietnam. This went so far as a government monopoly over opium, thus simultaneously serving the advantage to the French of poisoning our people and making a profit off of it. Up to a quarter of the state budget was funded by opium pre-war. It is clear that this can continue no longer.
Does not the eight-fold path teach that one should reject craving, greed, avarice, and excessive pleasure, to focus on a middle path? Opium is without doubt a spoke in the wheel of the eight-fold path, turning away people from the path of righteousness into what can only be defined as the complete opposite of the Buddhist ideal. Instead of freedom from wants, desire, it replaces it with the most foul and alien subjugation to the addiction of this substance.
Furthermore, internal usage of opium and its production for internal usage takes up valuable resources that can be better devoted to other subjects, instead of to drugs which are useless expenditures. Many of the drug growing regions are in the interior in areas which are vulnerable to external subversion, and therefor must be brought under tighter government control anyway. As a result of this it has been decided that opium production in this region will be eradicated, through the destruction of fields devoted to opium. These farmers which do not have opium to farm any more will be devoted to other cash crops or relocated as necessary, or will farm on government nationalized farms left in existence. The army will be deployed to the region to destroy non-authorized poppy fields, with aerial surveillance as appropriate. Any current established opium production that has been grown on non-authorized farms will be taken in by the government, with re-compensation. Future opium grown without authorization will be destroyed, without re-compensation.
Of course, it is all pure co-incidence that all authorized fields fall into the ethnically Vietnamese regions and only to ethnically Vietnamese farmers, while the unruly hill people will face the brunt of state repression in non-authorized fields where their continued illegal production of the material will serve as a way to justify campaigns against them and their repression.
Remaining opium production, used officially for medical production, will be government nationalized. Opium farmers will be placed under government surveillance and red monks will be set into the region to provide moral guidance and to fight the opium plague. Rumors that the government is not destroying all opium fields, but leaving behind a significant number under tighter control, to continue and even increase opium exports to China, the Philippines, and Malaysia, for providing foreign exchange currency, are of course false - according to the Vietnamese government. The fact that estimates of between 50% to 75% of opium fields are not destroyed but instead will remain under tight government surveillance for "exports" of various nature, and that a corresponding degree of refinery and processing facilities - all well in excess of medical needs - will continue to be used at Saigon, has little bearing upon this, quite clearly. Several hundreds tons of opium production capacity per year remains, which has to some where. Also present at Saigon is an expansion of more sophisticated manufacturing facilities for morphine and heroin, more potent than opium, which without an internal market, will have to be exported.....
[spoiler]In practice a semi-official [i]Comité de la commerce amicale de l'Extrême orient[/i] (CCAEO) (Committee of friendly East Asian commerce) has been established. Official, in that it has a legitimate side of encouraging the exports of Vietnamese state goods to China, Malaysia, and the Philippines. In practice, it has the unofficial objective of assisting in the establishment of opium smuggling links, as well as surreptitiously establishing ties to revolutionary activity. Currently most of it will be smuggled in on ships but it is envisioned later increases to aerial transport and fast smuggling boats to outrun revenue cutters. Its activities will be hopefully a boon to the foreign currency reserves of the State, and hence enable us to finance our industrialization)[/spoiler]
Internal consumption in official contexts will be halted completely. There are around 1,000 opium dens in Vietnam. These will be closed down. Drug smugglers and supplies will go through processes of political re-education under Red Monks, and users will face extensive penalties if they use the drug, specifically indictment into les Temples de la rééducation morale, moral re-education temples. There under supervision of Red Monks they will learn to reject desire, craving, and hence suffering, in doing labor for the edification of socialism in Vietnam. Mobile brigades will be formed to respond to the thread of smuggling over the Chinese border into our nation, although they might be somewhat more lax about opium going the opposite way... A problem with this is the extensive number of Chinese in our country who doubtless will be part of smuggling routes for opium. These will be incorporated into the CCAEO on an official basis to constrain them, and surveillance of these potential dissident groups tightened up. Vietnam is after all, a Vietnamese and Buddhist nation, and these dangerous foreign elements, both feudalistic and superstitious, must be kept at bay. Drug smugglers who continue their trade against government prohibitions will be executed. Regardless, it is clear that within Vietnam itself, opium consumption will cease, or Vietnam will gain more people to be re-educated through the value of labor on various government projects.
Similar laws and institutions are to be placed into effect in our fellow socialist sister state of Laos, which will cooperate with us in dealing with the opium problem and will coordinate its production and export as appropriate.
Does not the eight-fold path teach that one should reject craving, greed, avarice, and excessive pleasure, to focus on a middle path? Opium is without doubt a spoke in the wheel of the eight-fold path, turning away people from the path of righteousness into what can only be defined as the complete opposite of the Buddhist ideal. Instead of freedom from wants, desire, it replaces it with the most foul and alien subjugation to the addiction of this substance.
Furthermore, internal usage of opium and its production for internal usage takes up valuable resources that can be better devoted to other subjects, instead of to drugs which are useless expenditures. Many of the drug growing regions are in the interior in areas which are vulnerable to external subversion, and therefor must be brought under tighter government control anyway. As a result of this it has been decided that opium production in this region will be eradicated, through the destruction of fields devoted to opium. These farmers which do not have opium to farm any more will be devoted to other cash crops or relocated as necessary, or will farm on government nationalized farms left in existence. The army will be deployed to the region to destroy non-authorized poppy fields, with aerial surveillance as appropriate. Any current established opium production that has been grown on non-authorized farms will be taken in by the government, with re-compensation. Future opium grown without authorization will be destroyed, without re-compensation.
Of course, it is all pure co-incidence that all authorized fields fall into the ethnically Vietnamese regions and only to ethnically Vietnamese farmers, while the unruly hill people will face the brunt of state repression in non-authorized fields where their continued illegal production of the material will serve as a way to justify campaigns against them and their repression.
Remaining opium production, used officially for medical production, will be government nationalized. Opium farmers will be placed under government surveillance and red monks will be set into the region to provide moral guidance and to fight the opium plague. Rumors that the government is not destroying all opium fields, but leaving behind a significant number under tighter control, to continue and even increase opium exports to China, the Philippines, and Malaysia, for providing foreign exchange currency, are of course false - according to the Vietnamese government. The fact that estimates of between 50% to 75% of opium fields are not destroyed but instead will remain under tight government surveillance for "exports" of various nature, and that a corresponding degree of refinery and processing facilities - all well in excess of medical needs - will continue to be used at Saigon, has little bearing upon this, quite clearly. Several hundreds tons of opium production capacity per year remains, which has to some where. Also present at Saigon is an expansion of more sophisticated manufacturing facilities for morphine and heroin, more potent than opium, which without an internal market, will have to be exported.....
[spoiler]In practice a semi-official [i]Comité de la commerce amicale de l'Extrême orient[/i] (CCAEO) (Committee of friendly East Asian commerce) has been established. Official, in that it has a legitimate side of encouraging the exports of Vietnamese state goods to China, Malaysia, and the Philippines. In practice, it has the unofficial objective of assisting in the establishment of opium smuggling links, as well as surreptitiously establishing ties to revolutionary activity. Currently most of it will be smuggled in on ships but it is envisioned later increases to aerial transport and fast smuggling boats to outrun revenue cutters. Its activities will be hopefully a boon to the foreign currency reserves of the State, and hence enable us to finance our industrialization)[/spoiler]
Internal consumption in official contexts will be halted completely. There are around 1,000 opium dens in Vietnam. These will be closed down. Drug smugglers and supplies will go through processes of political re-education under Red Monks, and users will face extensive penalties if they use the drug, specifically indictment into les Temples de la rééducation morale, moral re-education temples. There under supervision of Red Monks they will learn to reject desire, craving, and hence suffering, in doing labor for the edification of socialism in Vietnam. Mobile brigades will be formed to respond to the thread of smuggling over the Chinese border into our nation, although they might be somewhat more lax about opium going the opposite way... A problem with this is the extensive number of Chinese in our country who doubtless will be part of smuggling routes for opium. These will be incorporated into the CCAEO on an official basis to constrain them, and surveillance of these potential dissident groups tightened up. Vietnam is after all, a Vietnamese and Buddhist nation, and these dangerous foreign elements, both feudalistic and superstitious, must be kept at bay. Drug smugglers who continue their trade against government prohibitions will be executed. Regardless, it is clear that within Vietnam itself, opium consumption will cease, or Vietnam will gain more people to be re-educated through the value of labor on various government projects.
Similar laws and institutions are to be placed into effect in our fellow socialist sister state of Laos, which will cooperate with us in dealing with the opium problem and will coordinate its production and export as appropriate.
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