This is Da Mao, one of the two giant pandas detained in the Toronto Zoo. The giant panda is the only breed of bear with an entirely vegetarian diet. The giant panda eats bamboo chutes, which it is able to grasp with a specially modified bone growing out of its paw, much like a thumb. The giant panda is native to the bamboo groves of southern Sichuan province, which is also the northern end of the poppy growing region known as the Golden Triangle.

The Golden Triangle produces more opium poppies than anywhere else on Earth, with the exception of Afghanistan. Opium cultivation in the area has been a major source of revenue for warlords and tribal hillfolk, whose men will spend days chasing the dragon, forcing village women to eek out a meagre living on their untended rice terraces.

The giant panda is a descendant of more conventional meat-eating bears. As a result, its teeth are designed for chewing meat, not bamboo, and the giant panda has the short digestive tract typical of meat-eating animals. Since plants take more time to digest than meat, the giant panda must consume massive quantities of bamboo in order to extract enough nutrition from his food.

Villages in the Golden Triangle are often so riddled with addiction to opium that they sell their daughters into slavery in the cities, exchanging them for small sums of money, sufficient to buy more refined heroin from the very traders who take their raw opium milk. Starvation and HIV are rampant.

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