Destroyed lives, overcrowded prisons: the hidden cost of ya ba methamphetamine in Thailand

Ya ba" is the Thai name for methamphetamine, which is causing havoc in Thailand. This drug is consumed by all strata of Thai society, from prostitutes to workers, from students to teachers, from artists to TV presenters...

Despite a bloody war on drugs and frequent seizures by the authorities, the supply of ya ba tablets has increased to the point where prices are falling
According to a UN expert, a better approach is to manage the demands of treatment, prevention and minimisation of harm.

Pichai Gudsorn, 16, is small for his age.

He grew up in poverty in a slum in the suburb of Praram III, Bangkok, with a brother and six cousins raised by their 70-year-old grandmother.

She earns very little by selling rubbish and Pichai's parents rarely visit her.

"I never had any money and was bullied at school all the time because I was poor," said Pichai - but that all changed when he was introduced to drugs by a friend.

At the age of 12, he started selling methamphetamines and dropped out of school.

He was also taking them until two months ago, when he was arrested for the third time for selling drugs.

Cases like Pichai's are a side effect of the rampant trade in ya ba - a drug combining methamphetamine and caffeine - in Thailand, where prices have fallen as the supply of the product has increased.

Ten years ago, ya ba pills cost between 250 and 350 baht each, but Pichai's experience as an anti-drug mule was different.

"I was paid 200 baht to 300 baht to deliver 20 to 30 methamphetamine tablets.

Later, I bought (the total amount) to sell for about 1,500 baht or less if my credit is good... before selling them 250 baht for a pair of pills to taxi drivers, construction workers and migrant workers," he said.

According to the Thai government, there are more than 10 ya ba production bases in the Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos converge on the banks of the Mekong.

The region, long controlled by armed militants, has an estimated production capacity of 2 million tablets per day.

The "glut" causing ya ba's price drops is linked to the massive surge of Shan State (from Myanmar) into Thailand through the border around Chiang Rai, but also increasingly through Laos to circumvent Thai efforts along the Myanmar border," said Jeremy Douglas, regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The use of ya ba, which has long been popular among workers and truckers as a stimulant, exploded in the early 2000s.

The administration of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra responded with a controversial war on drugs in 2003, which was widely condemned by the international community after more than 2,800 extrajudicial killings in the first three months of the campaign.

The high production capacity also made subsequent government attempts to control ya ba ineffective.

From November 2018 to January 2019, Thai authorities seized 247 million pills; it confiscated 248 million in 2017 alone, compared to 124 million in 2016.

"Unfortunately, this shows that the big Thai efforts have little impact on street supply and that interception rates are probably low even if seizures are increasing," said Douglas.

"It is possible that the situation will change somewhat, if I may say so, if regional leaders are willing to look at the seriousness of the problem and completely rebalance their approach."

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"Fundamentally, they need to move away from quick fixes and mass arrests at street level, focus seriously on organised crime, which is running amok in the region, and start addressing market demand by putting in place treatment, prevention and harm minimisation efforts.

"These mass arrests on the street have caused another aftershock of the drug epidemic: prison overcrowding.

As of March 2018, 74% of the detainees in Thailand were charged with drug cases."

"Thailand's prisons would be empty without drug charges," said Sunthorn Sunthorntarawong, a 68-year-old Protestant pastor who runs the House of Blessing Foundation, an organisation that serves as a juvenile detention centre and manages adult prisoners before and after their release.

Pichai was arrested while selling crystal methamphetamine, or "ice", to a police informant.

He was sentenced to two years in juvenile prison, which he chose to serve at the House of Blessing, a partner organisation of the Thai Department of Corrections.

He stated that he did not need treatment, but wanted to complete his long overdue basic education for 22 months at the foundation.

Sunthorn said that cases like Pichai's were common.

"They start as mules because they want to buy things like mobile phones or bicycles before they start doing drugs," he said.

Jaroenchai Klaimek, 26, who works with Sunthorn at the foundation, said the best way for young mules or drug addicts to turn their lives around was to break ties with friends involved in the drug trade.

A former drug trafficker, he was in and out of four detention centres before the age of 20, where he claimed to have had many professional contacts before leaving everything behind eight years ago.

"In the detention centre, the more drugs you are arrested with, the cooler you are," said Jaroenchai, recalling his personal experience of the ya ba boom.

"I could sell 200 ya ba tablets for 25,000 baht, after buying them for 18,000 baht," he said.

"Within half an hour, these pills reached the hands of construction workers, office workers, motorbike taxi drivers, street cleaners, managers and actresses.

But with the price of cheap methamphetamine now, I can't imagine anyone wanting to risk selling it."

The government introduced a free treatment programme for drug addicts in exchange for a reduced or, in some cases, waived prison sentence, but volunteers were fewer than the authorities had hoped.

"No addict considers himself ill," said Sunthorn.

He has been helping drug addicts and prisoners for 40 years and still has hope for those he meets.

"There is no measure to prevent a man from becoming involved in drugs, but we want him to be able to depend on himself.

We just have to trust that they will.