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Article: OPIUM RESURGES IN U.S. SOUTHEAST ASIAN COMMUNITY
- Article from:
- Post-Tribune (IN)
- Article date:
- December 25, 1987
CopyrightCopyright, 1987, Post-Tribune. All rights reserved. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED. (Hide copyright information)
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THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED VERSION.
In letters, boxes, shoes and even spools of thread, customs agents are finding a resurgence of opium, one of the world's oldest drugs. This year they have seized more than 1,000 pounds of the gummy, black narcotic mailed into California and the rest of the nation - more than three times as much as the year before.
The source of the opium, agents say, is Southeast Asians living in refugee camps in Thailand.
Its destination: the refugee communities of the United States, many of them in California, where some former Hmong and Mien tribes people are believed still to smoke the fabled drug as they did in the hills of the ...