Amphetamines booming in East and SE Asia

Amphetamines booming in East and SE Asia

Associated Press
Bangkok

Production and trafficking of amphetamines have boomed in Asia in
recent years even as the output of opium has decreased in
Southeast Asia's infamous Golden Triangle, a UN-affiliated agency
said on Wednesday.

"Amphetamine-type stimulants, especially methamphetamine, have
continued to be the main drug abuse problem" in East and
Southeast Asia, said the International Narcotics Control Board in
its annual report released on Wednesday.

"Trafficking routes have developed considerably, reaching
illicit markets in almost all countries in the region," said the
Vienna-based INCB, an independent UN body that monitors the
global drug situation.

The report also said India and other South Asian countries
"continue to be used by drug traffickers as transit countries
because of their proximity" to the opium-growing areas of
Southeast and Southwest Asia.

It added that India, Pakistan and Thailand were supplying
drugs for "cyber trafficking," the growing use of the Internet to
sell pharmaceutical products such as tranquilizers, which contain
controlled substances. The main markets are Europe and the United
States.

Methamphetamine, also known as ice, is the most widely abused
illicit drug in Japan, South Korea and Thailand, where it is
called ya ba, or crazy drug, said INCB.

Manufacture of the drug has boomed in recent years, most
recently spreading to the Philippines from its main production
bases in Myanmar and China, the report said.

India and China were cited as sources for the chemicals,
called precursors, necessary for making methamphetamine.
Production of the main ingredient, ephedrine, is legal, but it is
diverted by traffickers and smuggled into Myanmar.

Meanwhile, Akira Fujino, representative in Bangkok of the UN
Office on Drugs and Crime, said production of opium has decreased
in recent years in the Golden Triangle - the border areas where
Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet - in part due to the growing
popularity of amphetamines.

"Certainly traffickers go in any direction which will make
them profitable," said Fujino, explaining that it's cheaper and
more convenient to make methamphetamine than heroin, which is
produced from opium.

On Monday, the U.S. State Department released a report that
attributed the decline in Myanmar's opium production to
"eradication efforts, enforcement of poppy-free zones,
alternative development, and a sharp shift toward synthetic drugs
in consumer countries."

Both reports noted, without comment, Thailand's war on drugs
declared last year, which critics charged had led to
extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers - an allegation
denied by the Thai government.

The London-based human rights group Amnesty International this
week called on Thai authorities to launch an independent and
impartial investigation into the killings "to make the findings
public, and to bring to justice any member of the security forces
suspected of involvement."