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DRUG TRAFFICKING
It is often difficult, in the Asia-Pacific region as elsewhere, to identify the real extent of cooperation in dealing with the drug trafficking problem, since much of this cooperation occurs on a bilateral level between civil law enforcement agencies. In this region, a major concern is the opium production from the Golden Triangle and Afghanistan, which in one recent year accounted for eighty percent of U.S. heroin imports. Drug trafficking is also a growing danger to the increasingly modern and urban societies of East Asia, as well as to traditional drug destinations in Europe and North America. In addition to heroin, Japan and Korea are concerned with methamphetamine traffic, whereas Australia and New Zealand have concerns with vessels bringing cocaine from South America. In the U.S. domestic context, U.S. military forces play a significant supporting role to the lead U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Customs Agency and Drug Enforcement Agency efforts to detect, intercept, and arrest drug trafficking through two (East and West) Joint Interagency Task Forces that focus on the Mexican border and the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean sea and air “transit zones.” But in the Asia Pacific region, most actual intercepts and arrests of drug traffickers have been at borders and in ports or territorial waters, where jurisdiction is clearly defined, with very few seizures on the high seas. Military roles in the region to counter drug trafficking should include sharing of intelligence and tracking data on suspected drug shipments and perhaps a regionwide clearinghouse center for exchange of drug-trafficking data (an issue the ASEAN Regional Forum may eventually wish to address).
 
For drug trafficking that does reach the high seas, consideration should be given to international law making drug trafficking, like slavery and piracy, subject to high seas arrests by all nations. Additionally, in the crowded coastal waters of, for example, Southeast Asia, joint drug patrol and enforcement agreements (like those regarding piracy) might be very useful in specific overlapping territorial seas areas like the Malacca and Singapore Straits.
 
  In the international legal context, the 1988 UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (the 1988 Vienna Convention) was the first to specifically address maritime drug-trafficking. The 1988 Vienna Convention provides a framework for states to cooperate on the high seas to suppress such traffic. UNCLOS Article 108 also provides for such cooperation. And the 1998 UN General Assembly Resolution S-20/4 calls for regional cooperation meetings for maritime drug law enforcement, training, and use of common procedures provided in the maritime drug law enforcement training guide of the UN International Drug Control Program.24 With Chinese leaders admitting the existence of nearly a million drug addicts in China alone, and the recent October 2000 anti-drug cooperation agreement between the ASEAN countries and China, there is hope that seizures of drugs at sea (like the January 2000 Thai Navy seizure of $23.5M in drugs from two trawlers in the Andean Sea) will become more common.25 Indeed, U.S. Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, Admiral Dennis Blair, recently cited narcotics trafficking in the region as a growing problem that needed a multilateral approach.26








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