According to Tim Weiner, the Central Intelligence Agency “has been accused of forming alliances of convenience with drug traffickers around the world in the name of anti-Communism” since its creation in 1947.
This was part of a more all-encompassing effort to leverage organized crime syndicates and other black market networks as methods of infiltrating, subverting, and ultimately dissolving Soviet Socialist Republics. Because the drug trade was such a lynchpin of the colonial-era plantation movement, you had a lot of anti-communist sympathizers already forced underground in the face of communist revolutions (which also, incidentally, tended to be anti-drug use).
Armies of Nationalist China fled into Thailand Myanmar, and Cambodia to run heroin operations and only significantly influenced the regimes in the region for decades and today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_drug_trafficking_allegations
This was part of a more all-encompassing effort to leverage organized crime syndicates and other black market networks as methods of infiltrating, subverting, and ultimately dissolving Soviet Socialist Republics. Because the drug trade was such a lynchpin of the colonial-era plantation movement, you had a lot of anti-communist sympathizers already forced underground in the face of communist revolutions (which also, incidentally, tended to be anti-drug use).
Armies of Nationalist China fled into Thailand Myanmar, and Cambodia to run heroin operations and only significantly influenced the regimes in the region for decades and today.