The latest report by a veteran research team from Europe released on Saturday, August 23, has concluded that the ASEAN's target to make the Southeast Asian region drug-free by 2015 is "obviously unattainable."
 
Withdrawal Symptoms by Transnational Institute's Drugs and Democracy Programme present several arguments to back its point, such as:

    * A lack of alternative sources of income and food for former opium producing farmers
    * Shifting of cultivation from traditional growing areas to new localities (for example, from Wa and Kokang to Southern and Eastern Shan State in Burma)
    * Continuing conflict in Burma
    * Investment in poppy cultivation from Thailand and China
    * The policy by Burmese Army for its field units to be responsible for raising their own funds
    * Both Burma and Laos score worst poverty index in the region and the traditional poppy regions in these countries are the worst off
    * Current levels of assistance to offset the impact of the opium ban are woefully insufficient
    * Lack of initial investment capital
    * Transformation of available arable land for commercial purposes by the government
    * Policy interventions are wrongly sequenced

In Thailand, for example, substantial time and resources were invested to create alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers before the authorities introduced law enforcement measures. But in Burma and Laos, deadlines are being set first and people are being ordered to stop without preparation. They have led to overly repressive approaches toward poppy farmers.
 
Moreover, the ASEAN expectations have been unrealistically high. The 2008 status report on the ACCORD Action Plan recommends that "in 2009, the average family income of farmers who were persuaded to access illicit crop production and to engage in alternative crop cultivation should be equal to the family income in the years that illicit crops were cultivated."
 
This, the TNI flatly says, "will clearly not be achieved."
 
The TNI is not alone in reaching the conclusion. The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) that has been giving food to the former poppy farmers in Burma since 2003 has also said that it "will be many years before former poppy growing communities are able to support their needs through alternative crops and other livelihoods."
 
The TNI has instead recommended that the 2015 deadline "not be enforced if even greater hardship for rural communities is to be avoided."
 
It has also urged full respect for human rights, adherence to democratic principles and provision of space for local organizations to represent their rights meaningfully. "It is clear that without good governance, no sustainable solution for drug-related problems is possible," it says.
 
The TNI, founded in 1974, is based in Amsterdam. It's Drugs and Democracy Programme has already published a number of debate papers on the subject. The authors of Withdrawal Symptoms, Martin Jelsma and Tom Kramer, can be reached at Email:[email protected] and www.tni.org/drugs.