Onpoisons & Policies
Spurring the origin of life on Earth
decades of wars and violence, from the Vietnam War to the Killing Fields of Cambodia, peace now reigns across Southeast Asia. Even in Myanmar, war-torn for decades, peace negotiations are underway. But one war stubbornly remains: It is brutal and merciless, backed with the harshest laws and toughest police action, but is nevertheless apparently intractable and unwinnable. This is the drug war.
In the Philippines, since President Rodrigo Duterte took office four months ago, close to 4,000 drug suspects have been gunned down by police and vigilantes. Innocent people and children killed in the crossfire were, in Duterte’s words, “collateral damage”.
Elsewhere in Asia, gunfire on the streets is rare, but drug users still face a catalogue of violence and abuse. The United Nations (UN) has estimated some 450,000 people in China and across Southeast Asia were held without due process in drug detention centres in 2014 and has called for these centres to be closed. According to multiple reports by Human Rights Watch, detainees experience torture, forced labour, sexual assault and routine physical violence.
Punishment, prison, and at worst death, are often used to resolve drug issues. Of the 300,000 prisoners in Thailand, some 70 percent have committed a drug-related crime, the Thai Correction Department says. Drug users also make up the majority of prison populations elsewhere in southeast Asia. The drug war is ugly. And yet, it wasn’t always this way. “The war on drugs only really kicked off in the 1980s,” says global drug policy expert Martin Jelsma, the Transnational Institute’s programme director. Mass incarceration increased after the 1988 Trafficking Convention, which required countries to increase sentences for drug use, he adds.
Drug policy has changed frequently. In the last 200-odd years, drugs have been a major trading commodity, helped fund an empire, caused wars and were behind the story of Hong Kong.
After
Going back many centuries, drugs were once revered in Asia for their use as spiritual and medical aids. How did drugs go from such an elevated position to the taboo of society?
Ancient ecstasy
Some 3,500 years ago, the priests of ancient India – called Brahmans – would take a ritual drink called soma. The Rigveda, a collection of Vedic Sanksrit hymns and one of the world’s oldest religious texts, repeatedly mentions soma. The drug was described as inducing ecstasy and divine experiences, as articulated in this line: “We have drunk soma and become immortal; we have attained the light, the Gods discovered.”
The identity of soma remains a mystery. Some scholars think that it was a hallucinogenic mushroom, either Amanita muscaria, used by shamans in Siberia, or, as as ethnobotanist Terence Mckenna believes, Psilocybe cubensis. Another theory is that it was a waterlily; soma was said to grow on mountain lakes. Academic David Spess says some Nymphaea waterlily species can induce states similar to that from the drug 3,4-methylene-dioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), popularly known as “ecstasy”.
Another ancient drug is opium, which was being cultivated around 3,400 BC in lower Mesopotamia. The Sumerians, considered to be the world’s first civilisation, referred to it as hul gil, which translates as the “joy plant”. Many other ancient cultures also used opium, including the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, mostly for medicinal purposes and to aid sleep.
In the 7th century, Arab traders travelled far east with opium. By the 1500s, Portuguese sailors were also recorded as smoking the drug.
Opium was well known – and still is – as a pain reliever, as some ancient Indian texts described. But its use was still limited and even prohibited in parts of Asia, such as Ayutthaya, Thailand’s ancient capital. That was all to change after it became a major trading commodity.
Many other ancient cultures also used opium, including the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, mostly for medicinal purposes and to aid sleep
“Poison” in exchange for tea
In the 1750s, with its own private army, the British East India Company took control of Bengal, then a lucrative region in India producing textiles, spices, dyes and opium. They established a monopoly on the opium trade, controlling operations through contractors.
In China, the Company was buying increasing amounts of tea and silk, to meet demand at home. “The Chinese, however, whilst keen to export tea, really wanted nothing in return except silver bullion,” writes Martin Booth in Opium: A History.
The Company had a trade deficit, and opium provided a perfect solution. It was profitable, light, did not spoil and was easily packed. Once addiction set in, there was a steady market.
A prohibition on opium by the emperor did not curb trade. The East India Company set up an elaborate system of exporters and smugglers that included Mandarins in Canton. Ships were often disguised and armed. The trade was so profitable that others wanted to join in, including Chinese and foreign traders. By 1810, American companies held 10 percent of trade in Canton with Turkish opium.
above An eruptive hydrothermal vent at the Brimstone Pit
nearly nine decades, science’s favourite explanation for the origin of life has been the primordial soup. This is the idea that life began from a series of chemical reactions in a warm pond on Earth’s surface, triggered by an external energy source such as lightning strike or ultraviolet (UV) light. But recent research adds weight to an alternative idea, that life arose deep in the ocean within warm, rocky structures called hydrothermal vents.
A study published this year in Nature Microbiology suggests the last common ancestor of all living cells fed on hydrogen gas
For
Thailand’s
beloved King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world’s longest-reigning monarch, passed away at the age of 88 on October 13, 2016 after 70 years as head of state. A statement was released by the royal household that the king had “passed away peacefully” at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok after battling poor health for some years.
His son, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, was announced as the new monarch to succeed his father’s rule – a somewhat controversial choice.
Many people in Thailand viewed Bhumibol as semi-divine. At the news that the king’s already precarious condition had become unstable, people congregated outside Siriraj Hospital and chanted “Long live the king!” for much of the day before the official statement of his passing was released.
Many members of the crowd wore yellow, considered the king’s colour, while others donned pink, a colour deemed symbolic of the monarch’s well-being.