Publication Date : 14-05-2013
The grey Honda Civic would not have raised eyebrows anywhere, but Bangkok's Metropolitan Police had a tip and were looking out for it.
They stopped it on the night of April 29, searched it and found 230,000 methamphetamine pills. The shipment was worth an estimated 69 million baht (US$2.32 million).
The two men in the car were arrested, and later the police arrested a third person - a woman - to whom the men were scheduled to deliver the shipment. All are Thais in their mid-20s.
The two in the car were regularly paid between 100,000 baht and 150,000 baht by a trafficker in northern Thailand to ferry the drugs to Bangkok.
In this case, the pills were destined for the woman, Porntip Channuan, whose clients were, among others, reportedly inmates of Chonburi prison near Bangkok.
It was a big bust, but by no means unusual.
The numbers and value of the drug trade - principally methamphetamines - in Thailand are routinely staggering, but have reached new heights in the last six to eight months.
From October 2012 until the end of March this year, more than 59 million methamphetamine pills, 959kg of Ice or crystalline meth, 118kg of heroin and more than 10,000kg of marijuana have been seized.
The deputy national police chief, General Somyos Poompanmuang, who is in charge of drug suppression, believes drug producers across the border in Myanmar - mostly in Wa and Shan states - have been stockpiling their produce and are sending larger quantities than ever into Thailand because they are uncertain about Myanmar's policies on drug trafficking.
In Myanmar, there is a state of flux, with peace deals being negotiated with armed ethnic groups, including Shan and Wa factions, which could lead to new power dynamics in the region - or even a new round of conflict should talks fail.
Money from drugs is often used to buy weapons by the many armed groups in the border states.
Gen Somyos told the Bangkok Post that the Thai army's Pha Muang task force had estimated that there could be about 500 million methamphetamine pills stashed at the border awaiting couriers.
Supplies of the more potent crystalline form of methamphetamines have also surged.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Thailand seized 484kg of crystal meth in 2007. By 2011, the amount seized had shot up to 6,700kg.
Last month, the UNODC revealed its latest figures, which showed that organised crime in the Asia-Pacific region is a US$90 billion a year business, of which drugs accounted for about one-third.
Heroin is making a comeback as well.
Again, Myanmar's border states are implicated as major producers. Myanmar's army and security agencies have only tenuous influence in border areas long at war with the government.
Experts say where there is control, often local army officers themselves profit from the enormous margins to be had from the drug trade. And where there is no control, local militias make money off the drug trade - and buy arms.
A report on the Kachinland News website - which focuses on Kachin state - says that an estimated 70 per cent of university students in the state capital, Myitkyina, are addicted to some drug or other.
It is common to find used hypodermic syringes in rubbish bins and littering dark back alleys.
According to one report on the same website, the Kachin Baptist Convention, a group with more than 300 churches in the state, estimates that nearly 80 per cent of ethnic Kachin youth are addicted to drugs - mostly heroin.
Myanmar's methamphetamine habit is smaller than Thailand's - possibly because purchasing power in Myanmar is far lower than in its prosperous neighbour.
The government of Myanmar estimates the number of meth users at around 150,000, though experts believe the real figure is far higher.
And as Myanmar opens up and incomes increase, at least in cities like Yangon, meth use will certainly also increase.
In Thailand, the flood of methamphetamines and the rising tide of crystal meth, and the return of heroin, have sown deep damage in Thai society, where the number of those thought to be addicted to amphetamine-type stimulants is estimated to be well in excess of a million people, some starting as young as in the sixth grade.
Suppressing trafficking is "an urgent agenda for the government", General Paradorn Pattanatabut, secretary-general of Thailand's National Security Council, told The Straits Times in an interview this month.
The northern provinces bordering Myanmar are the front line, and the war is a vicious one.
In early January, police in Chiang Rai, which is part of the once- notorious Golden Triangle, seized a million methamphetamine pills and 46kg of crystal meth.
A few days later in a separate bust in the same province, soldiers from the Pha Muang taskforce seized 1.2 million meth pills after a firefight which ended with two drug runners dead.
In another bust the same month, 900,000 methamphetamine pills and 5kg of Ice were seized from four people arrested at a restaurant in Chiang Rai.
"We are seeing substantially increasing trends in trafficking," one enforcement expert based in Bangkok told The Straits Times.
"The increase in crystal meth, in particular, is off the charts. There have been cases of Ice producers giving it for free to meth pill traffickers," he said.
The reason is to lure users and traffickers to the more potent and expensive form of the drug.
"The numbers just keep growing," he said.
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