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."