people living in North Thailand. (Ref: Race, Jeffrey, (1974), The War in Northern Thailand, Modern Asian Studies, Vol 8, No. 1, (1974), pg. 105, Published by Cambridge University Press, https://www.jstor.org/stable/311628 ) The second is that it was such a very small project that a well financed (from foreign countries) NGO could handle it. It has no universal application. In 1988 when the AD project started in Doi Tung the total area under illicit poppy cultivation in Thailand was only 2811 hectares (pg. 23 of UNODC's World Drug Report 1999). The same year 1740 hectares had been eradicated. The third reason is that the AD project required eradication to succeed. Eradication still continues. 264 hectares of illicit poppy fields were eradicated in 2013 according to the World Drug Report of 2014. Had Alternative Development or Opium Replacement been so successful in Thailand, why is eradication continuing or for that matter opium use, which according to Table I of UNODC's South East Asian Opium Survey is consumed by 96,284 people? The Alternative Development lobby has in its anxiety to push this concept has ignored all these hard facts, as also that all resolutions on Alternative Development recommend Alternative Development as a means to assist eradication. Thus AD is not all that peaceful either. See also Illegal drug trade Opium licensing Opium in Iran Opium production in Afghanistan First and Second Opium Wars References External links United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime United States Agency for International Development German Technical Cooperation Agency Opium Agricultural policy