Sue Lloyd Roberts of the BBC visited Hanoi in 2014 to investigate the rhino horn trade. In her first attempts, she was accompanied by a government appointed “minder,” and she was told by shopkeepers that rhino horn was illegal and not available to purchase. She was able to return alone later, and after telling one shop owner that she had a sick husband, he agreed to sell her rhino horn, and told her that “it has an 85-to-90% success rate” in curing cancer. The price was $6,000 for 100 grams (3.5 ounces). She visited another shop, in which the owner claimed he was a traditional medicine doctor, and she requested a hangover cure. The man showed her a large piece of rhino horn, and told her it will be a good cure for hangover. The shop owner himself claimed he had killed the rhino in South Africa, and the sale was perfectly legal. Roberts explains, however, that South Africa banned Vietnamese hunters in 2012 from their legal rhino hunt program because the Vietnamese hunters were selling the horn that was only approved to be imported to Vietnam as a “trophy horn.” When the Vietnamese hunters were banned, poachers were organized by crime syndicates to supply the horn for the illegal trade of rhino horn in Vietnam and China (Roberts, 2014).
In another BBC video shown here below, another unidentified reporter purchases rhino horn.
Social issue:
As disposable incomes have increased in Vietnam, it is clear that “education, enforcement, protection, and awareness efforts aimed at reducing the use of horn have all demonstrably failed to turn the tide of this rising demand” (Biggs, 2013, p. 1039). The cultural value of rhino horn remains high, and continues to increase its demand despite the environmental damage that results. People do not appear to recognize the difference between scientific facts about the horn and myth.
First of all, a rhinoceros horn is similar to hair and fingernails and not a true horn, which is more of a bony structure. The rhinoceros horn is made of calcium and keratin, and will grow and replace itself during the life of a rhinoceros (Orenstein, 2013, p. 37). It does not have medicinal value.
Orenstein (2013) explains that the idea that rhino horn is valued as an aphrodisiac in Chinese medicine is actually not correct. The aphrodisiac value is a western misconception. Orenstein explains that Chinese herbalists commonly used rhino horn as long ago as 2600 B.C. to treat a variety of ailments caused by toxins, and it is considered as an “exotic, semi-mystical” (Orenstein, 2013, p. 40) substance in traditional Chinese medicine.