History of Illegal Drugs (First of a Series)

Hole of Justice

By Peter G. Jimenea

History of Illegal Drugs (First of a Series)

It is imperative for our peaceful citizens to know the menace brought about by illegal drugs to society.  I started writing about illegal drugs in 1994 but nobody inquires as they knew nothing about it. Now they do, after illegal drugs become a national problem and worse, a global crisis.

This story refers to the Chinese Triads. Most of the documented information herein are based on the book Warlord of Crime by a US investigative journalist Gerard Fosner. He is the only writer allowed by the 14K Gang Triads to visit its headquarter in Hong Kong.

With the exception of the vast majority of hardworking and honest Chinese, I have no intent to slight them. As a matter of fact, they deserved my praises as the 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. They 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 business until the mid 50s. By then, Auguste Joseph Ricord, a Corsican boss of the French connection, was the king of heroin trade from Turkey to Marseilles and into New York until the mid-70s.

Heroin addiction, however, declined at the entry of the Latin-American Cocaine Cowboys in the underworld business. A research conducted by Posner revealed that at the time, Cocaine Cowboys earned enormous profit from this booming trade where “shabu” earned its street-name - poor man’s cocaine.

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 consist of the Northern provinces of Siam (now Thailand), Eastern fringe of Laos and a broad stretch of Northeast Burma ( now Myanmar). The Chinese are also credited for conversion of Hong Kong as the third-largest financial center after New York and London.

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

A Hong Kong Police Superintendent said the Chinese Triads invented organized crime. And as he is said to have remarked, “They are the best at it. These secret societies have made it into big business and they are absolutely ruthless.”

This syndicate makes billions of dollars every year from regular businesses of organized crime – gambling, prostitution, extortion, loan sharking, protection rackets, guns-for-hire, up to political and civic corruption. But there is one thing that makes them unique – heroin!

Triads control most of world’s heroin supply coming from the Golden Triangle, a mountainous patch of land covering Laos, Thailand and Burma that can produce more than 70 percent of the world’s opium and heroin. This is an advantage the other criminal organizations don’t have.”

But where did these Chinese Triads originate? How did Hong Kong become a British colony and how did the Triads become warlord of crime in underworld business? How did they make the Mafia looked like a bunch of school kids in uniform when it comes to atrocities in criminal activities?

Next issue: Origin of The Triads.