By Philip Cunningham

Just about everyone knows that drugs are bad. If you didn't learn it from education and law-enforcement types, you'd know it from the global entertainment and media culture. The problem with the mainstream media, of course, is that it's sacrificed its credibility with simplistic "Just say no" messages, rather than exploring the nuances of a complex subject. What, in fact, makes a drug good or bad? Why do people continue to purchase and consume, at great risk, banned substances? Is it possible to move beyond the knee-jerk responses that stigmatize drugs and drug consumers and simply present the facts?

The Hall of Opium in Chiang Rai, Thailand, due to open next year, intends to do just that — and in a novel way that generates more light than heat. Set in the mythic Golden Triangle on a hillside near a bend in the Mekong River where Laos, Burma and Thailand meet, the Hall of Opium aims to "hook" some of the million Thai and foreign tourists who trek to this scenic river valley to say they've "been to the Golden Triangle."

If the Hall of Opium in Golden Triangle Park delivers on its promise, the visitor will enter with one paradigm — the exotic, murky Golden Triangle of lore — and exit with a more balanced picture. With its emphasis on history, the Hall of Opium offers a strangely reassuring look at a region with a shaky future. The story of the poppy seems almost benign in contrast to the brave new world on the Burmese side of the Golden Triangle, where illicit methamphetamine production is replacing opium and Chinese tourists are crossing the border to visit casinos and transvestite shows.

Thai NGOs and charitable foundations have a history of showing admirable pluck and resourcefulness in confronting the humiliating problems caused by the drug trade, the sex business, and the spread of AIDS in the kingdom. Thailand was recently singled out for praise by the United Nations, for instance, for approaching AIDS in a pragmatic and compassionate manner. Organizations such as the AIDS Access Foundation and Concrete House defy conventional stigmas to raise both awareness and compassion for victims.

Or perhaps you've heard of Mr. Condom. Meechai Viravaidya's humorous and forthright Thai campaign to promote condom use successfully de-stigmatized a once taboo topic with clear benefits to public health. Likewise, a small NGO called Empower, led by Noi Apisuk, reaches out to female sex workers by recasting the AIDS problem as one of worker's rights. Counterintuitive thinking reigns supreme here, reflecting the deeply Buddhist values of tolerance and voluntary self-improvement. The non-judgmental approach helps to curb self-hatred, a necessary precursor to self-improvement and self-respect.

In a similar spirit, The Hall of Opium, a project of the Mae Fah Luang Foundation under royal patronage, is designed to clear the air of misconceptions about hard drugs in order to better focus on underlying problems.

The planning and research office for the Hall of Opium is located in the heart of Bangkok on a lush estate tucked in between Siam Square and the Saensaeb Canal on the grounds of Srapatum Palace. Inside a cluttered office on the third floor, I find American researcher Charles Mehl, chatting on the phone in fluent, colloquial Thai. He winks and waves me in, looking every bit the absent-minded professor ensconced in a narrow office crammed with books, maps, interesting knick-knacks, tribal textiles, and research films. "Serpico," "The French Connection" and "Reefer Madness" are some of the videos stacked precariously above books like "The Politics of Heroin" by Al McCoy. Wedged in between stacks of National Geographic and bound facsimiles of ancient Siamese tax records are numerous opium pipes, opium weights and hill tribe handicrafts.

It's not unusual for foreigners here in Thailand to speak some Thai, but I've encountered none who speak with Mehl's verve and rapid-fire delivery. By contrast, his English is slow and measured at first, as if he is still thinking in Thai.

"This is a project inspired by Her Royal Highness, Princess Mother Srinagarindra," he explains, "who used to live right over there, in the Srapathum Palace." Mehl describes how the Princess Mother's work with hill tribes at the Doi Tung Development Project in Chiang Rai sparked her realization that local opium producers and addicts needed to be treated with understanding, not contempt, if they were to change their ways.

Mehl was impressed at the energy and down-to-earth attitude of the monarch's mom, then in her nineties. Research commenced by trying to answer some basic questions about how the pristine, verdant hills and valleys of the Golden Triangle came to be equated with drug smuggling, heroin and death. How long have the hill tribes been involved in the opium trade? Is it an integral part of their culture? What is opium and where does it come from?

"Initially, I got hired as a researcher ... who could handle materials in Thai and English to determine the story line for this project. I thought it would take about six months," Mehl says, pausing for a moment. "That was six years ago."

One of his first tasks was to separate the subject of opium from that of the hill tribes, which have only been engaged in large-scale production since the end of World War II. Consider opium's historical origins: It was first mentioned in ancient Sumerian medicinal texts; the first archeological evidence of poppy plant cultivation was found in Switzerland; and the opiate-laced poppy sap was later used in Egypt, Greece and Rome.

"There's no such thing as a short history of opium," says Mehl, whose doctorate in rural sociology from Cornell University was based on research done in Thailand's Khorat province. After much reading and consultation with experts in various fields, he asserts that he's been able to narrow his focus to "the first five thousand years or so."

"We have this exhibit that shows how opium went from West to East," says Mehl. "It takes you on a journey from England to India. You look through the portholes of a mock clipper ship, making stops in India and Singapore on the way to China. The English were so addicted to tea, it almost bankrupted them." He also notes the irony of the British selling opium to the Chinese to pay for their national addiction to tea.

"Tea boomed with the industrial revolution, and the sugar and milk added to it, along with toast and butter, became the staple of the working class diet. So you have them trading slaves to get West Indian sugar, and selling opium to the Chinese to import the tea."

Mehl offers to guide me on a virtual tour through the Hall of Opium. Entering the Hall itself will require traversing a spookily 130-meter long illuminated tunnel that cuts through the hillside. It aims to create a dreamy/nightmarish atmosphere of darkness and mystery.

The light at the end of the tunnel is a bright, airy lobby where poppy plants will be grown. From there it's a short walk to the auditorium for a multimedia presentation about opium production worldwide. Following the multimedia presentation, the visitor will enter a large domed room featuring highlights from the history of poppy cultivation.

Next will come a "dark and bright" hallway, showing both the horrors of addiction and the merciful medicinal benefits of the drug. Heroin (coined from the term "heroic" for its amazing pain-killing properties) turned out to be more addictive than the researchers at Bayer labs in Germany had thought at the turn of the 20th century. (The following year they invented aspirin.)

Mehl points out that it is usually not heroin itself, but malnutrition and a dangerous lifestyle that are fatal. Public health authorities in countries such as Scotland, the Netherlands, and Switzerland have run successful programs of dispensing clean heroin and needles to registered addicts. Some of them hold down "normal" jobs and obviously pose less risk to society at large than unregulated addicts peddling and using bad dope. Heroin, despite its horrible reputation, is less addictive than nicotine.

And what new museum is complete without a gift shop or cafe? Believe it or not, poppy-seeded bagels and other snacks will be available in the museum snack bar to illustrate the non-medical benefits of the poppy plant.

Although leading exhibition-design experts were consulted for the project, the foundation decided to hire a film director and event producer to make the exhibit more "fun and in touch with popular tastes," according to Mehl.

"Thanphuying Putrie is supervising the development of the museum for the Foundation, while Buranee Ratchaibun, from Siam Studio, is doing the creative stuff," he adds. If Charles Mehl is the idea man, Ms. Buranee is the artist who has taken the history and philosophy off the page to construct what promises to be a compelling multimedia tableaux. Her influence as project coordinator is clear in the upcoming "Gallery of Excuses/Gallery of Victims," a multimedia presentation of reasons why people start using drugs and then the problems that come with addiction. There will be quotes from some famous opium/heroin users, though it's hard to improve on Lenny Bruce's quip — "I'll die young, but it's like kissing God" — which is slated for inclusion.

Former TV-commercial director Buranee also left her mark on the meditation-inducing Hall of Reflection. The austere, bench-lined space is intended for the contemplation of the spiritual concept of moderation, which Buddhism describes as "walking the middle way."

The Hall subtly promotes the necessity of a nuanced approach to the problem of drug use. Legalization as one possible solution is discussed alongside more traditional law-and-order approaches for viewer consideration. And then there's the spiritual example of creative thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi, who said, "Remember that there is always a limit to self-indulgence, but none to self-restraint."

A bit of a quotation junkie himself, following our virtual tour Dr. Mehl offers up his favorite quote from the Hall of Reflection, a sobering line from Julio Cortazar: "The evolution from happiness to habit is one of death's best weapons."

- Philip Cunningham is a lecturer in the Faculty of Communication Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.