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It was 1956 the CIA began funneling money and arms into a secret army in Laos to fight the communist Pathet Lao. These militants were Hmong villagers whose major cash crop was opium. According to historian Alfred McCoy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison they facilitated large scale trafficking of opium using CIA helicopters from the Air America charter airline. One of the architects of the operation named Tony Poe would tell Front-line NBC that their leader Vang Pao was making millions of dollars from the operation. After refining the opium into heroin at their army base in Long Tieng the heroin was smuggled into Vietnam where it was purchased by American GIs. According to a White House study, by 1973 roughly 36% of GIs were using heroin regularly.

KEN WINS!