Thailand's Deadly Drug War On Meth: A New Epidemic | Insight | Full Episode

foreign [Music] massacre at the daycare in Thailand shocked the wall as details of the killer emerge he was reported to be facing drug charges the aftermath the government ordered a Crackdown on drugs and it has been flooded with the mouth there's no doubt about it Thailand is trying to hold back the tsunami of methamphetamines millions of pills smuggled from Myanmar considered the world's largest producer of the drug s myth is pouring into Thailand [Music] [Music] what's behind the meth crisis and can anything be done to stop it [Music] thank you [Music] Thailand shares a border with Myanmar one that stretches almost two and a half thousand kilometers long [Music] this way um thanks foreign Thai border patrols are not simply checking for illegal immigrants or expired tourist visas they are on the hunt for something far more sinister the drug methamphetamine foreign [Music] happened across the border lies the Shan State the largest of myanmar's administrative divisions it's part of the Golden Triangle an area encompassing Myanmar Laos and Thailand which is notorious for being the world's largest source of heroin the un's office of drug and crime has tracked the flow of Narcotics across the region so when I meant if you look at the size of the Sharon State it's like 1.5 times bigger than my home country South Korea so we are talking about you know state but is essentially is really large state that Shan state has a long history of drug production starting with a heroin back in the days the reason why Chance day has become an Epic Center for drug production has to do with a lot of residing in their part of the world there are so many groups that I need of raising funds and drug is one of the product that they can raise funds easily compared to others but following efforts by local authorities and the U.S drug enforcement agency heroin production has fallen in the last few years Instead The Golden Triangle now has a new drug of choice methamphetamine unlike heroin meth isn't made using opium plants instead it is an artificial drug concocted using precursor chemicals prior to 2015 the biggest Mass Supply in the region was China in particular southern part of China Guangdong provinces however due to the increased efforts of Chinese governments to suppress this mass production in their home country organized crime groups to start to migrate into different parts of the regions and they most of their production site migrate into the Golden Triangle of part of Myanmar compared to open production and heroin that production doesn't require a lot of land first in order to grow opium you need a huge size of land for open cultivations second math production requires only smaller number of people you don't need a whole Workforce for a cultivating opium and it needs a lot of time so organized crime groups can generate a huge amount of money by involving math production than heroin production me foreign [Music] State billions upon billions of pills flow up to the rest of the world many through Thailand in a two-year period between 2017 and 2019 meth seizures By Thai authorities soared tenfold just in one week of January this year over a ton of meth were seized but the poorest border means this could just be a drop in the bucket foreign is a journalist on the front lines of Thailand's War on Drugs covering the narcotics beat for the last three decades um foreign country Myanmar by quantity Thailand is like number two in the world by Matt seizures at the global level yeah for instance 2021 that we have the seizures of math in Thailand was about 75 tons I believe that's just seizures right I don't know how much it's been actually traffic to thailands so assuming about 10 percent uh might not be an overestimate I think that would require the conservative estimate Thailand is a waypoint in meth trafficking routes pills make their way through the country to its points of Entry then export it to other parts of the world the pandemic stymied this pipeline but now the international borders reopen following the pandemic meth demand is back with a vengeance and since the 2021 coup the Shan state has become more Lawless and more conducive to drug activity in the face of this Thai prime minister priority ordered a Crackdown on drugs in October last year clashes between authorities and traffickers have ramped up sins foreign foreign foreign foreign tablet which is my tablet basically you can get it around less than 20 bucks per tablet basically it has become cheaper than beer so if you want to use math you don't have to pay huge Fortune so everybody can afford if you want to that's the problem the Thailand face with the drug trade booming it is attracting more people willing to traffic the drug across the border camera [Music] John not his real name lives in the northern part of Thailand his grandparents were part of a militant group in Myanmar to escape persecution they fled across the border grew up in and around the drug trade um [Music] foreign are called Yaba a name meaning crazy medicine now foreign he too became involved in the drug trade he started as a career carrying Contraband between Myanmar and Thailand come outside foreign foreign foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] to John couriers like him had ways to evade the authorities [Music] hang up in time and yeah foreign Village along the time me and my border opioids were a common sight in this part of Thailand decades ago foreign but the scene has changed opium is much less common now instead since the emergence of meth small rural Villages like his have become pit stops for traffickers coming out on Myanmar [Music] foreign [Music] foreign at the heart of the trafficking problem is money residents in rural Thailand make around 8 000 Baht a month around 230 US dollars for some the lucrative payoff from the drug trade can be tempting me know and Thomas and Mark come on nowadays you see a lot of truck drivers being paid a smaller money carry about a ton of math on the back of his truck financers are sitting in somewhere let's say Hong Kong or Macau or Taiwan or southern part of China uh maybe some other parts of the world as well but these are the businessmen but the foot surgery so make bringing drug out of the drug production sites uh General people their needs in money but the drug trade is a risky one despite knowing the lay of the land John's activities eventually caught up with him foreign I'm gonna lie Library when you're going to type on me a lot of arrests have become more commonplace as the Thai authorities stepped up drug enforcement in six months between 2021 and 2022 it apprehended more than 120 000 drug suspects but locking down the Border will prove a more elusive task from 2019 there has been increases in the math being trafficked through the Western border of Thailand once Thailand put their law enforcement campaign along the northern border then they're starting to use a different part of the border and we have seen this a lot instead of enforcement Char Yoon has decided to address the root of the problem by giving youths other economic opportunities instead foreign he's also turned his village into a tourist spot by creating Homestay Apartments foreign child hopes tourist dollars can pull his villages away from the drug trade nonetheless millions of meth pills continue to pour into Thailand through the Border and they're finding their way to the cities [Music] thank you Thailand's nightlife is Infamous 25 year old cat is an entertainment girl a euphemism for sex worker sex work is officially illegal in Thailand so cat agreed to speak to us on the condition of anonymity cup [Music] with me as drug use proliferate in Thailand a new service is gaining popularity in The Nightlife scene enter up the clients pay sex workers like cat to do drugs with them um foreign [Music] while it is mostly used recreationally there are significant wrists [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] Dr prani works as a psychiatrist at the Parham 9 Hospital in Bangkok part of her job is to counsel drug addicts including dispelling myths about myth foreign are a type of drug known as stimulants they increase the levels of dopamine in the brain a hormone responsible for pleasure and reward s is foreign this is a story that loved ones of meth addicts know well in Northern Bangkok K makes a living working as a maid the 49 year old saw the effects that meth had on her only teenage son [Music] foreign at a time when her son was staying with his grandmother he began experimenting with Yaba foreign [Music] foreign foreign [Music] stories like case have become more common according to a report by chulalong Kong University methamphetamine news has jumped by 30 last year and although her son eventually got treatment and is now drug-free K wants to see more efforts to Stamp Out myth ology foreign there's no doubt about it getting a treatment requires a lot of time and money and also support from your family members so the social cost of caused by this Matthews in turning is significant but a new law could make it harder for drug users to receive treatment because drug users are seen as only criminals not as people who need uh proper treatments [Music] Temple is located about three hours outside of Bangkok [Music] but instead of the usual Buddha's devotees many who come to this Monastery are rather unusual since 1959 the temple has run a drug rehabilitation program over one hundred thousand addicts like Australian Jeremy had gone through as detox program in terms of what we're famous for or I think some one place called it the hardest rehab in the world or something like this after he recovered Jeremy was so convinced by the process that he became a monk now he works with patient rehabilitation at the temple which includes a steam bar it is quite hot and the herbs do have a kind of they can sting a little bit especially early in your detox so for example a person coming off some hard drug to become hypersensitive so sitting in a hot room full of steam they're uncomfortable just sitting in a hammock or sitting on a chair it is this thing of helping a person develop this grit and this perseverance and so here he gets a chance to test himself he'll make a determination okay no matter what I will stay inside for 10 minutes is a deputy Abbott at the what he has been with the temple for 47 years in the early days monks like him mostly helped addicts of heroin and opium but that has since changed [Music] I foreign I don't know [Music] Thai people who come to the detox the vast majority of them are coming from Forever it's such a big pandemic problem so I would say more than 80 85 percent of Thai people come from methamphetamines I arrived in 2016 I think 2015 2016. in the beginning it was uh more I guess your stereotypical idea of what a drug user would look like more sort of younger men more tattoos and alternative lifestyle kind of look but then they all started getting teenagers and people who by the look of them they just look like a normal Thai person that you would see at the market but they have a problem K has been in rehab for 15 days like many here she has come to treat her meth addiction I started my friend because I work at the Krabi and she said just cry so go to enjoy go to Bar disco and then I start judging just rock a feeling I have power and I I can talk like something I scare you know if something is okay but when it's when it starts move it's just not okay anything it just probably not see anything yes and have power for cleaning girl for cleaning home and then to not sleep if I didn't not take around I feel really big no power sleep all day to treat addicts the temple uses a mix of spiritual and traditional techniques including the use of herbal medicine as you can see it is a massive amount of the medicine I think over over seven days it's steeped or reduced and yet transformed into this very thick viscous medicine the foul smelling concoction is part of the detox process supposed to clear the body of toxins with the added side effect of causing nausea Jeremy's own made an encounter with anxious Brew coincided with an educational trip for school children so there's 200 Thai school children just staring at us in abject shock and Terror so that just added another level of whoa like what is going on but you know also a natural feeling of human chain on a physical level the vomiting is a great way to help cleanse the body of toxins and also on a physiological level all of the contraction of the core muscles helps to recalibrate the patient you know musculoskeletal level as well a lot of drug users they tend everything tends to collapse so the vomiting is just a way of helping open back up just a physical form so it becomes also a symbolic Act of sort of psychological cleansing right here yeah a good room and then about two o'clock 2 30 go ahead for medicine can see yeah and then after that inhab medicine after that film my body is so just feel weak over this week you don't want to know how and then make me just sleep and then after this we'll get better I want to change myself I know if you go through I go back to what can I can do when it comes to here we have like for English and we have such a so that's very important yes so it's tough forever [Music] but a new law could make it more difficult for people like K to seek treatment in February a regulation change means that anyone caught with more than one methamphetamine pill will be treated as a dealer this means users with two or more meth pills in their possession could face jail time instead of rehab some observers worry that this will not address the problem people were dependent on math being isolated they don't have enough opportunities to receive appropriate treatment this is a huge problem because the drug users are seen as only criminals not as people who need a proper treatment so it constantly creates social problems but this is not Island's problem alone across East and Southeast Asia meth seizures have crossed 1 billion pills a year tackling the meth epidemic will need a multinational effort somebody everything foreign what is your primary concern two countries in eastern southeast Asia 10 years ago about 40 percent of the country responded math is their primary concern other 60 was heroin the same questions in 2020 for the first time all countries in the region May seize their Prime major concerned even countries like the China Vietnam and Malaysia known to have a huge heroin population they're all switched to methamphetamine so Sean state is surrounded by all those countries that have a huge and growing chemical industry and when it comes to math Productions some of those chemicals require for these math Productions like African pseudoephedrine and P2P those are also widely used for industry and pharmaceutical purposes so controlling those chemicals are really important to suppress the math production in the Golden Triangle but as you can see the amount of mass being produced and traffic the region has been failing to do so the solutions to this uh the math problems has to come from the curtailing of chemical flows into the shine State Myanmar uh otherwise the country will not be able to see success in the suppression of the math business [Music] there are expectations that the drug trade will continue to grow especially now that borders have opened after the pandemic but for John at least he seems to have escaped the clutches of Meth OD foreign foreign [Music]

Channel: CNA Insider

Views: 1,094,436

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Id: cdQEblPHc-8

Length: 45min 1sec (2701 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 28 2023