18 December 2003 :

Seven opium traffickers were sentenced to death by the People's Court in Vietnam's northern province of Tuyen Quang and 40 others from the drug network were jailed as part of a government crackdown, court officials said. The seven men were found guilty of trafficking nearly 857 kilograms of opium into Vietnam from Laos between 2001 and 2002. The network was broken up by police in October 2002.