The third film focuses on the demand side of the opium and heroin trade looking at the fallout from the South East Asian drug trade. We open with massively increased consumption of heroin in Asia. A remote hill-tribe village in the Golden Triangle demonstrates the ironic and devastating move by villagers away from their traditional opium to the much more dangerous use of heroin, a wide occurrence that is contributing to Asia's massive AIDS epidemic.

Heroin related deaths are up 100% across most of North America. The US is not the only country to be affected, the toll for Pakistan has been devastating with 1.7 million heroin addicts, up from virtually zero before the war.

The history of the Golden Triangle heroin industry, which began with the Vietnam War provides the key to understanding that western drug diplomacy is partly responsible. We then ask whether the "harm reduction" policies developed in Europe and Australia can be applied in Asia to help contain the HIV/ AIDS epidemic. Harm reduction, with its goals for public health as a whole rather than the elimination of drug use per se is exemplified best by free needle and syringe exchange programs.

We then travel to Australia to see the historical evolution of a harm reduction strategy and how it operates. In the United States harm reduction is strongly resisted because it has been labelled as a front for "legalisation". We see an activist arrested for his forty-fourth time in an effort to change the laws so that such programs will be allowed. In the city of Baltimore, where AIDS is largest killer of young men, the mayor, with the police department on side, is taking bold progressive steps for the US context. The historical legacy and the stand that the United States still takes on international drug policy means that the State Department tries to influence other countries away from harm reduction.

Back in Thailand and Vietnam, we find some cause for optimism in the dedicated work of a few people implementing programs that are making a difference. Their steps are also being supported by the government despite diplomatic pressure.

Filmed in Australia, Asia, Europe and the United States, Dealing with the Demon is a provocative and timely series which because of its long view, will be essential to understanding the tensions in what will continue to be major international and social issue over the next decade.

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