HOT Magazine HOT Magazine, Issue 12 Volume 4 | Page 57

More central to its recent history however
is the world famous, or better said infamous,
Golden Triangle. Today the Golden Triangle
is no more than the name used to describe the
triple intersection in which Laos and Myanmar
meet Thailand, but the term has a darker past
context. It is one of the central points in which
the cultivation, production, trade and sale of
opium and heroin was born. This was so for
a very long time, to the point where during
centuries on end it made the biggest share of
the entire world’s heroin, being overtaken only
towards the beginning of the 21st century by
Afghanistan in central Asia. Of course, with
cultivation, harvest, trade and production came
the entire package: lawlessness, crime, narcotrafficking mafias, covert trading posts, social
misery and dirty money.
It became very hard both to stop the cultivation
and to cease the activity of the tradin