A Brief History of Illegal Drugs

Hole of Justice

By Peter G. Jimenea

A Brief History of Illegal Drugs

When I started writing about illegal drugs in 1994, nobody inquires because they knew nothing about it. It was still the era of marijuana, cough syrup and depressant tablet users. But now they do, after illegal drugs have become a global problem.

This story refers to the Chinese Triads and most of the documented information written herein were based on the book “Warlord of Crime” by Gerard Fosner, the only US investigative journalist allowed by the Chinese 14K Gang to visit its headquarter in Hong Kong.

With the exception of the hardworking and honest majority of Chinese people with great respect, there is no intent to slight them. They deserved praises as Chinese race and culture are at the forefront since the inception of written history.

This delves only on the unfortunate segment of the Chinese race- the Chinese Triads who have a systematic and vicious control of large, illicit empires in the criminal world from the East to the West. The backbone of this organization is - illegal drugs!

The Triads are virtually unknown to the underworld until the mid 50s. Auguste Joseph Ricord, a Corsican head of the French connection, was by then the king of heroin trade from Turkey, Marseilles and into New York till the mid-70s.

Heroin addiction, however, declined at the entry of the Latin-American Cocaine Cowboys in the underworld business. As reported by Gerard Posner the Cocaine Cowboys has earned enormous profit from this trade like that of Ricord’s group.

But not until the advent of the 80s when the Hong Kong Triads took control of the heroin trade in the US with their “China white” product coming from the Golden Triangle, the mountainous mist-shrouded areas in Southeast Asia fit for the cultivation of hush-poppy plants.

The Golden Triangle is consisted of four Northern provinces of Siam (now Thailand), the Eastern fringe of Laos, and a broad stretch of Northeast Burma (now Myanmar). The Chinese are also credited for the fast development of Hong Kong into a third-largest financial center after New York and London.

Hong Kong became a melting pot of world’s businesses and had the world’s most profitable bank – the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. The most dominant Triad gang in Hong Kong was the 14K. It has over 30,000 members in the colony before it was returned by the British to Mainland China in July 1997.

An unnamed Hong Kong Police Superintendent claimed that the Chinese Triads invented organized crime. As he remarked, “These Chinese have Illegal drugs as backbone of their organization and they are “ruthless” if only to protect it.  

They made billions of dollars a year from all regular businesses of organized crime – gambling, prostitution, extortion, loan sharking, protection rackets, guns-for-hire, political and civic corruption. But one thing that made them unique – heroin!

The Golden Triangle is a mountainous area covering part of Laos, Thailand and Burma. Addicts in the US claimed that “China White” from the Golden Triangle is the best heroin in the world. The Triangle produces 70 percent of opium and heroin for world-addicts, an advantage other criminal organizations don’t have.

But where did these Chinese Triads originate? How did they become warlord of crime in the underworld? How did they make the Mafia look like bunch of kids in school uniform in terms of atrocities in the underworld business? Next issue, the Origin of the Chinese Triads.