Taiwanese chemists are a driving force behind the glut of methamptetamine flooding the Mekong region after they tweaked the recipe to dodge controls on other precursor chemicals, authorities say.
Thai police have been making record hauls this year of both low-grade yaba tablets and the more potent and expensive crystal meth version — or ice.
Experts say the Golden Triangle drug lords, mainly in Wa state in Myanmar, have been pumping out more drugs than ever.
It is trade worth tens of billions of dollars annually, with made-in-Myanmar meth reaching lucrative markets as far as Australia and Japan.
That oversupply is in part due to new and cheaper precursors, said a senior officer, attributing the change to the expertise of Taiwanese meth cooks working for the drug syndicates.
“They are now using sodium cyanide, a substance used in every factory in Thailand that is not controlled,” said Pol Maj-Gen Watchara Thipmongkol, commander in charge of anti-drug operations in the North.
The government tightly controls sales of the best meth-making substances — including P2P and the cold medicines ephedrine and pseudoephedrine — meaning buyers and sellers across the chain are traced and checked.
But the abundance of the cheaper sodium cyanide has navigated the ban, pushing the price of yaba pills — a caffeine-cut stimulant — down to around 100 baht from as much as 300 baht earlier.
“With cheaper chemicals they can produce 100 million pills and even if only 20 million pills make it through police checkpoints … it’s worth it,” said Pol Maj-Gen Watchara.
Taiwanese chemists have long featured in Asia’s methamphetamine trade, either as “contract cooks” or running their own laboratories.
Their involvement in the Mekong is “frankly not surprising given the skill sets needed to run meth labs and their history and expertise doing it in other parts of Southeast Asia”, said Jeremy Douglas, regional representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Drug networks are also finding new ways to outfox police, hiding meth in truckloads of fruit, or taking advantage of porous borders and underfunded law enforcement in Laos to run the drugs south.
Drug money riddles the region — yet few major players are taken down in the near daily busts.
Major seizures of precursor chemicals are even rarer.
Myanmar acknowledges a “significant” drug production problem, but says its neighbours must help prevent the inflow of precursor chemicals to make them.
