It was an event carried out by an institution of the United Nations called Drug Control and with the Laotian government's cooperation. They piled up all the opium, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine that was confiscated during the past year, and burned them all. I went to see it as I was curious, thinking "I may be able to smell the drug if I stand downwind of the fire." But they poured gasoline over the piled-up drugs, and perhaps due to the rain yesterday I could only smell the gasoline and not the drugs at all.

But I saw a lump of heroin. I heard that as much as 120 tons of drugs are produced annually in this country, and 70 tons of it are consumed within Laos. I think that there was about a small truckload of drugs that they burned today, and I heard they would cost about five hundred million yen at Laotian prices. They say that a minority tribe living in a mountainous region in the north makes a living mainly by cultivating opium; I guess the eradication of drugs is not an easy matter in this country. Although the amount of drugs burned today must be no great deal, I hope that this will be a message to the young generation where the rate of drug use is increasing.

Translated by Maiko Noda