Pubdate: Mon,  8 Apr 2002
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2002 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Chip Johnson

ELDERLY FEED OPIUM HABIT THROUGH MAIL

Many Immigrants Addicted To Drug

Every once in a while, like a gentle tap on the shoulder, Laotian war 
refugee Chiem Saetern gets a little reminder of the old days. It's always a 
bit of a surprise for the white-whiskered Saetern, now 72, but every so 
often he catches the unmistakable scent of opium in the air. Most recently, 
the pungent aroma hit the North Richmond man as he stepped into a friend's car.

"I've tried to encourage (friends) to stop, and some say they are trying to 
quit, but I can't be sure," said Saetern, whose son, Kao Saetern, 47, 
interpreted for him. "They believe if they stop the opium, they will die," 
he said. The physical withdrawal from opium is identical to that for 
heroin, a more popular opium derivative. The condition can last five days 
or more. And although quitting won't kill, it can make an addict feel next 
to dead for a while. Saetern kicked the addiction during a two-year stint 
in a refugee camp in Thailand, but thousands of his Hmong, Mien and Laotian 
contemporaries now living in Northern and Central California are not as 
fortunate. More than 30 years after the first wave of Southeast Asian 
immigrants arrived in America, opium use is still strictly a mom-and-pop 
operation. There is ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that most of the 
immigrants still using opium are elderly. Many were born in the Golden 
Crescent, a swath of agricultural highlands stretching from Burma to Laos 
where most of the world's opium poppies are grown. Some, like Saetern, were 
opium farmers who cultivated the cash crop and used it regularly. In recent 
years, the adult children of elderly Southeast Asian addicts have 
intervened and enrolled them in methadone clinics or drug rehabilitation 
programs to help them break their drug habits. "We have adult children 
bringing their uncles, grandfathers and mothers in here all the time," said 
Alicia Hererra, director of the detox unit at The Effort, a Sacramento drug 
rehabilitation program.

"They bring their (opium) pipes in and surrender them when they come in the 
door," she said. The senior citizen addicts, who come from urban and rural 
areas, make up about 20 percent of the patients admitted to the 10-day 
detoxification program, Hererra added.

Opium is undeniably a part of Southeast Asian culture, and immigrants use 
it as a pain reliever and cure-all, said Tseng Saecho, a counselor with 
Asian Mental Health Services in Oakland.

"It's something you would offer a friend at your home," said Saecho. "Just 
like a drink," he added.

Saecho's late father was a regular user in Laos, as were "pretty much all 
my ancestors," he said.

These days, Saecho has about 10 clients, all elderly, who receive treatment 
at a methadone clinic in North Oakland. One of the biggest hurdles he must 
overcome initially is the stigma attached to looking for intervention from 
outside the closed community, he said. "There is a shame attached to 
seeking help," said Saecho. "It's considered a weakness, and you're 
considered helpless. That's a big part of it," he added. Opium use among 
elderly southeast Asian immigrants is widespread, with most using the drug 
in their own homes as a cure-all for physical and emotional pain. And while 
their younger relatives may purchase and, in rare cases, distribute the 
drug, this is one drug problem that largely eludes the radar screen of most 
police departments.

But that is hardly the case for U.S. Customs Service agents at the Oakland 
mail facility, which processes more mail from Asia than any postal facility 
in the nation.

In the early 1980s, there was so much opium being smuggled through the mail 
that customs officers began referring to it as the Opium Mail Facility, 
said Linda Burnett, a postal supervisor at an airmail plant in Daly City. 
In a 10-day period in June and July 1999, according to statistics compiled 
by the National Drug Intelligence Center, more than 800 pounds of opium was 
seized at the Oakland mail facility.

But these days, it is more common to seize the drug in airmail parcels most 
often shipped from Laos and Thailand in small parcels weighing no more than 
two pounds, Burnett said. Varying amounts of the drug have been found in 
picture frames, figurines, even small amounts hidden inside cassette tapes, 
she said.

Most of the parcels are addressed to locations in Sacramento, Fresno and 
towns and cities in Minnesota and Wisconsin, two upper Midwest states with 
substantial Hmong and Laotian communities.

Airmail is the preferred smuggling method because packages tracked with a 
routing number via the Internet are never claimed if they are held at any 
one location too long, Burnett added.

Now that the opium harvest has begun in Asia, federal customs officers 
expect to see smuggling pick up again.

But smugglers are hard to catch. Recipients of mailed opium have a way of 
sensing when they're under police surveillance and can simply toss the 
package in a closet and never open it, explained Tom O'Brien, a customs 
field supervisor in San Francisco.

Even if a suspected drug user took the bait, attempting to prosecute an 
elderly refugee with no criminal record is a next-to-impossible task, a 
customs agent admitted.

Despite inroads made by drug counselors and programs that assist community 
groups, the Hmong, Mien and Laotian communities remain closed communities, 
where word of mouth means everything.

And some of his clients still turn to opium when methadone fails to dull 
the emotional or physical pain.

"My community, the Mien, are close-knit and if one person seeks help and it 
doesn't work, the word gets spread around," Saecho said.
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