cannabisnews.com: Rival To Heroin Is Thailand's New Nemesis 





Rival To Heroin Is Thailand's New Nemesis 
Posted by FoM on November 26, 1999 at 22:23:56 PT
By David Lamb, Times Staff Writer
Source: LA Times
Here in the Golden Triangle, amid jungles and the legacies of heroin and death, Thailand has mobilized its army against smugglers who are flooding this country with a devilish drug known as yaba, or crazy medicine. 
Few countries have moved more aggressively or successfully against heroin than Thailand. Once a major producer, the country no longer grows enough opium to satisfy the demands of its own addicts. But just as Thai officials were prepared to declare victory in the war against drugs, yaba surfaced as a new threat, addicting as many as 1 million Thais and wreaking social havoc throughout the country.   "I think we can win some of the war against drugs but not all of it," Sorasit Sangprasert, Thailand's top anti-narcotics officer, said in the capital, Bangkok. "Once we find a solution for one drug, another drug appears. It's like squeezing a balloon. One bulge disappears, and another springs up."   Yaba is the local name for a form of methamphetamine, similar to speed, that is usually smoked but can be ingested or injected.   It has been available in small quantities for decades in Thailand. It did not become widely popular, particularly among students, until a few years ago, when the region's economic crisis and Thailand's anti-drug campaign changed the pattern of drug use and distribution in Southeast Asia.   With money tight, drug addicts started looking for a cheaper alternative to heroin, and recreational users for a quick hit to wipe away the gloom. And with Thailand closing down many smuggling routes along its border, drug barons in neighboring Myanmar wanted to find a high-profit narcotic that was easier to produce and distribute than heroin.   Yaba fit the bill so perfectly that today it is close to dethroning heroin as the trademark of the Golden Triangle, the mountainous region that took its name during the Vietnam War as the world's greatest producer of opium. The area includes portions of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. Thai authorities estimate that 1.4% of the nation's teenage students are addicted to drugs. Eighty percent of the teenage users say yaba is their drug of choice.   "If you'd been here five years ago, you'd just have seen bamboo shacks," said Pronthep Iamprapai, Thailand's senior anti-narcotics officer for the Golden Triangle, who stood on a hill surveying this modern town and, just across the river in Myanmar, the equally bustling town of Tach Liek. "These are towns that yaba built."   Anti-narcotics officials say as many as 15 million yaba tablets a month are flooding into Thailand from Myanmar, formerly called Burma, often with the connivance of Thai dealers. Each pill, which costs about 3 cents to produce, can fetch as much as $5 in Bangkok, about 450 miles south of Mae Sai. Most are used domestically, though modest quantities are exported to the Middle East, Singapore, Malaysia and other places where Thai laborers work under contract.   Smuggling is profitable and difficult to stop: Thailand and Myanmar share a 1,300-mile border, and an individual porter can cram about 100,000 yaba tablets into a backpack. But Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, who considers drugs a threat to national security, has run out of patience and sent the army to the border to work with anti-narcotics police units. Since January, at least 20 Myanmar smugglers have been killed and millions of yaba tablets seized in firefights that often rage for hours in the border area.   "As of now, there is no need to talk. Why should we talk?" asked Gen. Chetta Thanajaro, security advisor to the Thai Interior Ministry. "If they cross into Thailand on one leg, we will shoot that leg. If they cross on two legs, we will shoot two legs."   In the isolated, jungle-covered border region between this town and Chiang Rai, about 40 miles south, the Thais set night ambushes and run patrols out of six-person, sandbagged outposts. Their enemy is Myanmar's 20,000-member United Wa State Army, which has expanded its heroin empire to include yaba. Western anti-narcotics agents in Thailand say the United Wa force is among the world's largest and best-armed drug-dealing organizations.   The Wa, an ethnic minority, fought Myanmar's government for years to establish a communist state but signed a cease-fire with the country's ruling generals in 1990. In return for ending the rebellion, Wa leader Wei Hsueh-kang has been allowed to run Myanmar's Shan state as a fiefdom, even though Thailand sentenced him in absentia to death in 1987 for masterminding a shipment of 1,500 pounds of heroin, and Washington has offered a $2-million bounty for his arrest. Wei contends that the group's income is generated by diamond mines, not illegal drugs.   Whatever the source of money, there's plenty of it. Wei has built a paved highway that runs roughly parallel to the Thai border to facilitate smuggling, the Thais say. He also oversaw the construction of Mong Yawn, a modern border town in Myanmar with schools and clinics, and outfitted the United Wa State Army with AK-47s, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and night-vision equipment.   "This is no ragtag guerrilla army," said Thai Police Maj. Rang Intana. "They're well-trained, well-armed and very good, tough soldiers."   Despite the explosive growth of yaba, which is easily manufactured from chemicals in fairly crude and portable jungle laboratories, the Golden Triangle still produces more than 2,000 tons of raw opium a year. That translates into 200 tons of heroin, or about 60% of the world's annual supply. What has changed in the past decade is that Thailand and Laos now produce only modest quantities for domestic use. That leaves Myanmar as the triangle's sole drug superpower.   Thailand banned opium smoking in 1952 and has worked closely with the U.S. since 1963 to battle heroin. It has given farmers incentives to turn land used for poppy production into fields for corn, beans and coffee and recently increased its anti-drug budget by 60%, to $4.5 million a year. Parliament is expected to pass a money-laundering bill soon aimed at drug dealers.   Although less than 500 acres are still cultivated for poppies in Thailand, the country remains an important transit route for heroin. But Thailand's aggressive anti-drug efforts have forced Myanmar's drug barons to seek new distribution routes.   Thai officials estimate that they intercept only 1 in 10 yaba tablets that cross the border from Myanmar. "We've only gone the first mile in a long journey," said one drug enforcement officer. Friday, November 26, 1999 Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times 
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Comment #3 posted by Dan Stan on June 25, 2000 at 18:44:16 PT:
Yaba Info
I am a newbie chemist and i wish to find a recipe and dosage chart. Please send links and files i would truly apreciate it.
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Comment #2 posted by Cloutier on June 01, 2000 at 06:21:29 PT:
yaba
Greetings,i would like more information, if it is possible, about the substance, the treatment and if you have some information where i may be able to get in touch with a clinic that deals with the treatement of this substance. i would be very thankful!!!A student from the university of sherbrookethank you
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Comment #1 posted by observer on November 27, 1999 at 09:14:51 PT
Classic Progression
Top Thai anti-narcotics officer: "we find a solution for one drug, another drug appears. It's like squeezing a balloon. One bulge disappears, and another springs up." Classic. Law was never meant to eliminate basic human drives. Those drives are there; supply and demand will satisfy them. (And laws and police were never a "solution" to the "drug problem" to begin with, as this article details.)> Yaba is the local name for a form of methamphetamine, similar to speed, that is usually smoked but can beingested or injected. Well, look at the bright side: at least Thai adults can't buy marijuana in stores! > It did not become widely popular, particularly among students, until a few years ago, when the region's economic crisis and Thailand's anti-drug campaign changed the pattern of drug use and distribution in Southeast Asia.Let's see. Anti-drug campaigns caused the switch from traditional opium to heroin. And now anti-drug campaigns "change the pattern" of drug use there from heroin to methamphetamines. Another rousing success for the drug warriors. Thailand's "tough" politicians and police simply need to pass a few more laws. It should work just as well as it works in the US.``DEA Success Update: Let's see. After 20 years of relentless federal Drug War activity, while the price of world-class marijuana has gone from $60 an ounce to $450, the price of quality cocaine has plummeted from $125 a gram to $30, and 30%-pure heroin has dropped from $700 a gram toabout $100. Way to go, boys!'' -- High Times, April 1995 
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