Global Courant 2023-05-29 14:40:08
Article content
BANGKOK (AP) — Law enforcement in Thailand said Monday they seized more than a ton of crystal methamphetamine last week in a southern province they believed was headed for Australia.
Article content
Police and Narcotics Control Board officials announced that the 1.2 tonnes (2,646 pounds) of the drug, known as “ice cream”, likely came from Thailand’s northern border region, part of the Golden Triangle where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet.
Myanmar is a major producer of methamphetamine, which over the past decade has become the dominant illicit drug in Southeast Asia for both domestic consumption and export, replacing opium and its refined product, heroin. Decades of political instability have left Myanmar’s border regions largely lawless and exploited by drug producers and traffickers.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime warned in a report last May that the production of and trade in synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine is rapidly increasing in the region. It said the number of methamphetamine tablets seized in East and Southeast Asia will exceed one billion in 2021 for the first time.
Article content
The methamphetamine seized in Songkhla province on Wednesday was disguised as packets of tea. Officials announced at a press conference that the three suspects who believed they were transporting the drug had escaped. making it difficult to know the plans of the traffickers.
Wichai Chaimongkol, the secretary-general of the Narcotics Control Board, said authorities had hoped to track the drugs to their destination in Australia to apprehend senior members of the trafficking gang, but the three suspected smugglers in Songkhla found out they were being watched .
Thai officials believe the drugs, hidden in a house and two pickup trucks, would be smuggled to Australia by sea, Wichai said.
Drugs seized in recent raids, including in March and April in Bangkok, are also said to be destined for Australia.
Article content
Australian police said in 2019 that they seized 1.6 tonnes of meth on Melbourne’s waterfront hidden in stereo speakers shipped from Bangkok. In November last year, Thailand’s narcotics officials said they had intercepted drugs bound for Australia disguised in various forms, including pillowcases coated in methamphetamine, 22 times in the fiscal year ending September 2022.
Last year’s UN report noted that the 1.008 billion meth tablets seized in 2021 were seven times higher than the amount seized 10 years earlier. It warned that increased production makes the drug cheaper and more accessible, posing greater risk to people and their communities.
