The GOL s ability to control the flow of narcotics within and across its lengthy, porous borders is severely limited by lack of personnel, resources, expertise, and ready access to many isolated areas of the country. Effective control over borders with Thailand, Burma, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia exists only in the vicinity of major population areas, along principal land routes, and at established river crossings. As Lao road infrastructure improves, and as interdiction efforts on Burma s borders with China and Thailand grows more efficient, Laos is apparently becoming a more popular route for illicit drugs. Vietnam and Thailand continued to report ever-increasing drug flows entering their territories via Laos. Addiction is overwhelmingly a rural phenomenon and concentrated in the north of the country.
Many addicts use opium because they have no access to public health care facilities.
In the northern provinces alone, the addiction rate is 4.84 percent of the population above 15 years old. The GOL is putting great emphasis on detoxification programs for addicts, although implementation details are left to provincial administrations. The location of most addicts in remote, often inaccessible rural areas increases the cost and difficulty of treatment and follow up. The survey estimated that a full 17 percent of Vientiane teenagers had experimented with drugs of one kind or another, including methamphetamine. Local methamphetamine use was almost unknown as recently as four years ago.