Thailand

Border Enforcement

From 1948, neighboring Myanmar experienced an insurrection, and its rebel provinces produced heroin for export as a means of financing their rebellion. Myanmar became the world leader in heroin production and routed exports through Thailand. With supply increasing dramatically, the 40,000 U.S. troops in Thailand during the late 1960s and early 1970s provided a local market for marijuana and heroin.

Thailand could not handle its Burmese refugees and illegal aliens, and relations with Myanmar eventually soured. In 2001 Thailand had a million Burmese refugees or illegal aliens, among them insurgents who financed their efforts through narcotics or simply sought to make easy money. The Thai-Burmese border had both military and civilian drug-dealing entrepreneurs. Thailand also worried that the heroin export trade had given way to production of amphetamines for southeast Asia.

American assistance was ineffectual. In 2001, when Thailand was having a conflict with Myanmar that produced occasional gunfire, the Cobra Gold military exercise placed 5,000 American troops near the Thai-Chinese border. The Thai anti-drug effort also included two U.S.-donated Blackhawk helicopters and at least 20 U.S. advisors.

Production and Use

Thailand does not produce much opium but it is plagued with importation of opium, heroin, and amphetamines from Myanmar and Laos. The Golden Triangle is fertile land for producing the opium poppy, and drugs have long been a substantial source of income. Until the 1950s Thailand had a legal and regulated opium business. When the Thai government closed poppy fields, Burmese drugs replaced Thai opium.

The drug of choice for Thailand's 2–3 million drug users is methamphetamine, and 60 percent of the [Page 775]drug criminals in jail possessed 100 or less pills, their sentencing the consequence of government attempts to curtail supply. Some Thai working people took drugs to relax, using acetylsalicylic acid, phenacetin, and caffeine (APC) drugs for this purpose through the 1980s. Use of APCs continued even as methamphetamine became popular for coping with long hours, obesity, and fatigue. Drug use also increased as Thailand endured an economic meltdown in 1997 that cost 2 million jobs. Between 1996 and 2003 methamphetamine use in Thailand soared.

As many as 3 million Thais abused pills in 2001; pills were a middle-and upper-class vice, while heroin was used by manual workers and the unemployed. The drug trade even expanded into Buddhist temples, with one in 10 monks using; one raid on a temple led to the seizure of 16,000 pills. In 2000 Thai schools were a market for a third of the pills. Sales totaled 700 million pills in 2003.

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