Bangkok police arrest 3 Taiwanese and a Thai man for possessing 200kg of heroin

[Halion]

Forget the mules and the delivery boys, check the money trail. This is only a good job if they can get to the source and 460 Kg is a bloody large source.

[sirchai]

I can understand a Heroin addict who sells some grams for his own relief. Good to read that they'd actually caught some bigger guys now.

Heroin had killed some of my friends and my family was suffering a lot having a guy on the needle.

I had to say goodbye to too many good guys in my life and I'd reckon to get all of them involved hooked up on the needle for a few months and then take it away from them.

And then go to hell.-

[skorchio]

wow thats a lot of smack. and yes to an early poster, $30 US for a gram is not an unusual price, but the gram will be cut and cut and cut (it has to be or it will kill people .... ). Smack really came down in price in Ireland during the 90s. 10 quid back then was all it took to get enough for a skag.

I really do wonder how much of that gear will actually end up being destroyed. So many bricks so many hands ...... all wearing gloves

[Kommiekat]

I Heroin course and grainy enough to clean the sides of toilet bowls and kitchen sinks?

Surely there must be some household uses for it besides shooting it in your veins?

[tingtongteesood]

Well the ticket he can return now, if ever he will fly again apart to the nirvana. But why does the headline tells about 200 kg and the article reads already 426 kg straight?! Someone there wants to double the success and honors? We can be sure when 200 kg getting confiscated the double has left the country already. Even if 4 of 5 smugglers getting caught the still get a win!

I would guess one is the real number and the other ( lower ) number is what the police were going to officially report, the rest was going to find it's way on to the streets whilst making a lot of money in some senior cops pockets....Guess someone forgot to tell the reporter....

[MaxYakov]

What's connecting the heroin in the car park to the Taiwanese men in the hotel room????

RTMFA: "The suspect allegedly made an appointment with the Taiwanese at the hotel, where he checked in and left his car in the parking lot."

Surveillance (video) might have confirmed it. One question is who ratted them out (didn't get paid or wanted to put them away permanently).

[MaxYakov]

I Heroin course and grainy enough to clean the sides of toilet bowls and kitchen sinks?

Surely there must be some household uses for it besides shooting it in your veins?

Sure, sure. Cleaning toilets and sinks. I don't think so. Top ten household uses of heroin blocks from a national survey:

1) Automobile jack stands

2) Paper weights

3) Bookends and shelf separators

4) Window Insulation

5 Whacking bugs

6) Door stops

7) Uneven table/chair shims

8) Shuffleboard pieces

9) Raising child seats

10) Throwing at flies

Read much?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin

Edited August 8, 2013 by MaxYakov

[RisqEM]

Too bad these aren't the Thaksin days...low life's like this deserve nothing but the chopping block for the amount of misery they spread

[bunnaag]

Well the ticket he can return now, if ever he will fly again apart to the nirvana. But why does the headline tells about 200 kg and the article reads already 426 kg straight?! Someone there wants to double the success and honors? We can be sure when 200 kg getting confiscated the double has left the country already. Even if 4 of 5 smugglers getting caught the still get a win!

they mixed up the weight with the assumed street price also

[SpeedFreakz]

200 as evidence and 226 for testing purposes to be divided among various individuals or agencies

ROFL

[DGIE]

I wonder what this drug give or do to people. Inspite of its expensiveness it seems so saleable.

While the COLLAGEN which is said to eliminate wrinkles, used by athletes because it makes

them stronger (which I really believe because I myself is using), etc. is only popular to people that

are beauty conscious

[alfalfa19]

If this was really 200 kg (440 pounds)of high grade white heroin, as I suspect, 426 million baht is not even a small down payment on the value. For once, the cops have underestimated the value.

[Dap]

What's connecting the heroin in the car park to the Taiwanese men in the hotel room????

Incompetent journalism?

[JimmyTheMook]

Good Lord !

That is a considerable amount of #4

[ALFREDO]

US$33/gram. Is that all it costs on the street?

I come to 71 Dollar a Gram, as 200 kg seems to be the right weight, the value and the weight got mixed up!

30 B to Dollar counted

Edited August 8, 2013 by ALFREDO

[catweazle]

Looks like a death sentence to me. Abso-<deleted>-lutely no sympathy from my side - may justice be served, here on earth and in hell, or wherever they may go after facing the firing squad...

[ALFREDO]

Its lethal injection in TH since some time.

[Torrens54]

Congratulations to the Royal Thai Police on excellent work.

Hope that if convicted, the scumbags involved in the crime will be despatched quickly and in the appropriate manner. That way, they'll never again have the opportunity to try and sell their filth to our children.

[nami]

Too bad these aren't the Thaksin days...low life's like this deserve nothing but the chopping block for the amount of misery they spread

Wow a true democrat a human rights advocate! This is offer and demand. nobody forces anyone to consume, it's a personal decision (and IMO governments and laws should respect the people choice)

[noitom]

You would thing that a bust of this magnitude would have more dots connected between the Thai, the Taiwanese, and other Thais for sure. The newspaper seems uninterested in connecting criminal dots in the Thai Mr. Big community or questioning the police rigorously.

[Treborz]

Hmm the papers here in Hong Kong (where the flight they were about to board was actually headed) are reporting that it was 2 Chinese and 1 Taiwanese and they were arrested at the airport about to board the plane

[sandhurstmolonski]

Really cant see how these Tiwanese can be implicated ...

There is no way Possible to Get it Out ! ...... Think they should have been more careful waith association .

But what is the Real Evidence ? ..Just one Thai Man ? ..Could be visiting anybody ..

But whats the chance of a Confession ? ..100 % ? , usually how it seems to work .

[Dr Strange]

Bayer used to sell it as a pain killer.

It was more of a cure for morphine addiction after the American Civil War....little did they know.

30 years AFTER the civil war, so little connection there. It was initially used in cough suppressants to replace morphine as they thought heroin would be less addictive. Ah the naivete...

[Dr Strange]

It's strange how we vilify heroin SO much (this is not a defence of it btw). Prescription drugs are a far greater problem from both an addiction perspective and from the number of fatalities (In the US, deaths due to prescription drugs are at least double those of heroin). It is pretty obvious that the war on ALL drugs has failed miserably, and, by continuing the current levels of prohibition, it only encourages organised crime (and thus all its offshoots such as gun sales, people trafficking etc)

The people we see in these news stories are usually on the very bottom rung of the ladder. You really think the bigwigs are the ones to carry 200kg? 80% of the time they are users who have ran up debts and are forced into doing courier work (the alternative often being harm to them and/or their families)

It really is time (in fact long overdue) for a HUGE policy shift worldwide;

a) regulate and control all the low harm substances such as cannabis, MDMA and LSD. This immediately frees up police and prison resources as well as generating IMMENSE amounts of tax. The savings and income made can then be ploughed into better education, better treatment, better harm reduction programmes and targeting the kingpins with everything you have. It also means the quality of regulated substances (ecstasy being a good example) is always good, reducing instances of death due to adulteration.

b - For those long term/chronic heroin addicts who do not respond to methadone, subutex or other treatments, have the respective health authorities prescribe heroin to them. This thus cuts down on drug related crime, BBV infection rates and overdose rates.

c) In every major town/city where there is a significant heroin problem, harm reduction centres should be mandatory. Provide clean needles and equipment and ensure every user is equipped with a naloxone pack. Again, BBV rates and overdoses would be reduced.

d) Remove addiction from the criminal justice sphere (as far as possession is concerned, not supply) and place it in the health sphere.

Seems such simple (and common sense) ideas when put down on paper, but if the steps above were followed worldwide, we would see a massive decrease in organised crime, drug related crime and deaths/harms caused by drugs.

Edited August 9, 2013 by Dr Strange

[webfact]

Police seize two huge drug hauls

BANGKOK: -- Three Taiwanese and a Thai man have been arrested for attempting to smuggle almost a quarter of a tonne of heroin, worth nearly B500 million, out of the Thailand.

The 237kg of heroin was the largest haul of the drug seized in a single operation this year, police said.

They also announced that in a separate bust a Hmong man was arrested in possession of a massive 4.2 million methamphetamine (ya bah) pills

Speaking of the heroin bust, Pol Maj Gen Ronnasil Phusara, commander of the Investigation Division of the Immigration Bureau said, “If these drug traffickers exported this heroin to another country such as the United States, Australia or Taiwan, its [street] value would have been 20 times more.”

Police from the Immigration Bureau and the Narcotics Suppression Bureau (NSB) made the arrests on Wednesday (August 7) following a joint investigation that targeted suspected Thai drug trafficker Supadech Booncharoen

Police received a tip-off that 40-year-old Supadech had moved the heroin – originally brought from Chiang Rai province – from a house in Ayutthaya’s Bang Pahan district to a hotel in Bangkok’s Bang Na district.

Gen Ronnasil said police then raided the hotel room where Supadech was staying, found the heroin hidden stashed in six pieces of luggage, and arrested Supadech.

The general said Supadech confessed that he had been hired for B1 million by three Taiwanese drug traffickers who were waiting to collect the drugs from him at Suvarnabhumi Airport before flying out to Hong Kong just after midday.

Armed with this information, police arrested the three men, named as Chien Tsai Hun, 44, Chi Hung Chiang, 53, and Yao Thung Wu, 44.

As for the methamphetamine bust, that took place in Phu Sang district, Phayao province, late on Wednesday (August 7).

Pol Lt Col Amnuay Intarangsi, of Phu Sang police, said an NSB unit tried to stop and search a pickup truck after a tip-off.

The driver refused to stop, so police shot out the truck’s tyres.

In the truck they found 15 sacks containing the 4.2 million pills. The driver of the truck, who was not named, was arrested.

Col Amnuay said NSB officers had followed for more than a month the movements of the drug trafficking ring of which the driver was a member, eventually learning about the imminent delivery of the massive haul of meth pills.

In follow-up raids police arrested another seven people.


-- Phuket News 2013-08-09

[KuhnPaen]

Bayer used to sell it as a pain killer.

It was more of a cure for morphine addiction after the American Civil War....little did they know.

30 years AFTER the civil war, so little connection there. It was initially used in cough suppressants to replace morphine as they thought heroin would be less addictive. Ah the naivete...

From wiki but there are many other books on the subject. I don't want this to be a you have your history, I have mine kind of thing. Yes, even 30 years AFTER the civil war, America had loads of people with "Soldiers disease" which was morphine addiction. A good book on the subject is "In the arms of Morpheus".

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1552975401

"From 1898 through to 1910, diacetylmorphine was marketed under the trademark name Heroin as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough suppressant. Bayer marketed the drug as a cure for morphine addiction before it was discovered that it rapidly metabolizes into morphine. As such, diacetylmorphine is in essence a quicker-acting form of morphine. The company was embarrassed by the new finding, which became a historic blunder for Bayer".^[63]

[Dr Strange]

Bayer used to sell it as a pain killer.

It was more of a cure for morphine addiction after the American Civil War....little did they know.

30 years AFTER the civil war, so little connection there. It was initially used in cough suppressants to replace morphine as they thought heroin would be less addictive. Ah the naivete...

From wiki but there are many other books on the subject. I don't want this to be a you have your history, I have mine kind of thing. Yes, even 30 years AFTER the civil war, America had loads of people with "Soldiers disease" which was morphine addiction. A good book on the subject is "In the arms of Morpheus".

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1552975401

"From 1898 through to 1910, diacetylmorphine was marketed under the trademark name Heroin as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough suppressant. Bayer marketed the drug as a cure for morphine addiction before it was discovered that it rapidly metabolizes into morphine. As such, diacetylmorphine is in essence a quicker-acting form of morphine. The company was embarrassed by the new finding, which became a historic blunder for Bayer".^[63]

Think you picked me up wrong. I more meant that Bayer did not 'release' heroin till 30 years after the civil war. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

[RisqEM]

Too bad these aren't the Thaksin days...low life's like this deserve nothing but the chopping block for the amount of misery they spread

Wow a true democrat a human rights advocate! This is offer and demand. nobody forces anyone to consume, it's a personal decision (and IMO governments and laws should respect the people choice)

Right, I agree with you. And if you also take a complacent attitude with misery, I'll say you're a true humanitarian as well. So what does being a democrat and a human rights advocate have to do with my disgust of heroin and the misery it spreads? Please, enlighten me with your views

[dao16]

This is a ton of dope. Some big money is involved here.....they NEVER find the boys at the top, it seems.....All these drug bust headlines should be the same: "Some poor, desperate schmucks got caught trafficking drugs and will rot in jail. In related news, drug kingpin and drug users not worried as everything will continue as before."

[purrboat]

i guess i don't know much about drugs but aren't people usually trying to get drugs into Thailand? where is it made? i guess it came from buma or cambodia then.

For someone I assume is calling Thailand home a bit of a history lesson seems in order. Thailand up to a few years ago was a major heroin source for the world. Only as of late has the route detoured from Cambodia and Burma. Northern

Thailand still has it's share but it now comes from Burma into Thailand. So you are right in one sense but people do still smuggle heroin out of Thailand as evidenced by this tread.