Security trumps drug control: How securitization explains drug policy paradoxes in Thailand and Vietnam

This paper investigates the paradoxes inherent in Thai and Vietnamese drug policies. The two countries have much in common. Both are ultra-prohibitionist states which employ repressive policies to contain drug markets. Their policies have, however, diverged in two key areas: opium suppression and harm reduction. Thailand implemented an effective intervention to suppress opium farming centred upon alternative development, whereas Vietnam suppressed opium production through coercive negotiation with nominal alternative development. Vietnam has embraced elements of harm reduction, whereas Thailand has been slow to implement harm reduction policies. This paper hypothesises that these two differences are largely a product of their perceived relationship to security. The two cases demonstrate how once an issue is securitized the ultra-prohibitionist rules of the game can be broken to allow for more humane and pragmatic policies

Bio-politics and the promotion of traditional herbal medicine in Vietnam

It is often suggested that, in the past 50 years, Vietnam has experienced a traditional medicine ‘revival’ that can be traced back to late President Ho Chi Minh's 1955 appeal ‘to study means of uniting the effects of oriental remedies with those of Europe’. In this article, I demonstrate how traditional herbal medicine came to be recruited as an important component of national efforts to promote the public health of urban and rural populations in Vietnam. Importantly, this has entailed a rejection of a colonial biopolitics that sought to marginalize ‘quackery’ in favour of a postcolonial bio-politics that aims to promote the ‘appropriate’ use of traditional herbal medicines. While the Vietnamese case bears many parallels to other countries in this respect, notably China, Vietnam's ancient history of medicine, postcolonial isolation and extensive health delivery network have resulted in a unique strategy that encourages rural populations to become self-sufficient in the herbal treatment of their most common illnesses

Resettlement and the environment in Vietnam: Implications for climate change adaptation planning

Increasingly the environment, and climate risks in particular, are influencing migration and planned resettlement in Vietnam, raising the spectre of increased displacement in a country already confronting serious challenges around sustainable land and water use as well as urbanisation. Planned resettlement has emerged as part of a suite of measures being pursued as part of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation strategies. This paper provides an historical, political, legal and environmental overview of resettlement in Vietnam identifying key challenges for framing resettlement as climate change adaptation. The paper outlines the scale of past resettlement in Vietnam, identifying the drivers and implications for vulnerability. Detailed case studies of resettlement are reviewed. Through this review, the paper reflects on the growing threat of climate change and the likelihood of increased displacement associated with worsening climate risks to identify some critical considerations for planned resettlement in climate change adaptation planning

Vietnam's Political Economy: A Discussion on the 1986-2016 Period

Being a member of the thriving ASEAN and successfully implementing economic renovation (Doi Moi) have drawn the world's attention on Vietnam around the turn of the millennium. Some even expected a much faster pace of transformation, and renewed economic, AND political, reforms in Vietnam, or Doi Moi II.However, in the recent transition turmoil the Vietnamese economy has experienced some significant setback, and the solution for getting the country out of the downward spiral of low productivity, waning purchasing power and increasing costs of doing business cannot be worked out without addressing those political economy issues that have shaped the modus operandi of the nation's economic system. This article discusses the post-Doi Moi political economy in Vietnam, from 1986 to 2016 – when the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam takes place – and prospects of reviving reform momentum in subsequent years.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe