Thailand all set for third phase of drug crackdown in the Golden Triangle


Featured image via United Nations

BANGKOK: -- The Golden Triangle and regions along the Mekong River are notorious for being one of the world’s most prolific drug-producing and trafficking areas.

Referring to the area intersected by the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, the Golden Triangle is second only to Afghanistan in the Golden Crescent when it comes to Asia’s opium production.

In a bid to combat production and clean up the area, countries in the Mekong area have joined forces to create the Safe Mekong Joint Operation, which launched its first phase back in 2013.

This year sees the launch of its third phase, which will focus on the source of the issue: intercepting precursors and the chemicals used to create the narcotics in order to stop them from reaching the drug production base, reports the Bangkok Post.

Countries will block known smuggling points along the borders and increase the number of checkpoints, particular at the Myanmar-Laos Friendship Bridge and the Soap Loi port in Myanmar, while also implementing joint patrols along the river.

Full story: http://whatsonsukhumvit.com/thailand-all-set-for-third-phase-of-drug-crackdown-in-the-golden-triangle/


-- (c) What's on Sukhumvit 2016-02-11

intercepting precursors and the chemicals used to create the narcotics in order to stop them from reaching the drug production base I thought all they need is fertilizer to make them grow and the chemical resin comes from the poppy flower mmmm

The precursor chemicals are needed to manufacture methamphetamine, not heroin.

Some judicious posting of senior local officials might go a long way towards helping!

With the designer, man made, drugs such as amphetamine (ya ba), and it's super strong derivative methamphetamine (ya ice), now far outstripping the opium poppy derivative heroin, as the most convenient drugs to produce in North Myanmar, South China and Loas, and transport via Thailand, it makes sense to attack their production by limiting the supply of the precursor chemicals needed to produce them, such as pseudoephedrine etc.

However, many of these precursor chemicals, such as the prementioned pseudoephedrine, are produced by large multinational pharmaceutical companies to combat human illness (eg pseudoephedrine is used to relief nasal congestion during a bout of the common cold, and is marketed under various names such as Sudafed...banned in some countries). These pharmaceutical companies, to obviously maximize profits, use countries such as India and Bangladesh to mass produce. Good business for them, but also excellent geographical based countries from where to illegally import these chemicals into the mountainous areas of North Myanmar and South China, where they are easily converted into the illegal drugs.

Therefore, it would make more sense to me if if all these "neibouring" chemical producing countries were also encouraged and invited to participate with the Safe Mekong Joint Operations, Stage 3, in their efforts to limit/intercept these precursor chemicals and combat the worlds war on drugs..

Cool. It's February. The arbitrary crackdown count for 2016 now stands at 3.

I'm stocked up with popcorn, and anticipate the next life enhancing crackdown to be announced forthwith.

If all drugs were legalised, the profits made by criminal syndicates would evaporate. Addicts would no longer burgle houses and mug people to support their habit. Enormous police resources could then divert to other issues such as domestic violence. The evidence is in from countries such as Portugal and Sweden that legalising drug use reduces crime.

The USA has devoted billions of dollars to combat drugs such as cocaine, ice and heroin, and makes no progress whatsoever. It's a losing battle. Just like Prohibition was.

The only caveat I have with legalising all illicit drugs is that when a person commits any crime under the influence of drugs, they are unable to use that as a copout in a court of law. You do the crime, you do the time.

What's on Sukhumvit disrepected Thai visa in this article http://whatsonsukhumvit.com/westerners-in-thailand-what-went-wrong/. Just a thought.

Have a look yourself. Off topic I know.

I apologize.

Edited February 11, 201610 yr by Wilsonandson

Spot on in my view.

If all drugs were legalised, the profits made by criminal syndicates would evaporate. Addicts would no longer burgle houses and mug people to support their habit. Enormous police resources could then divert to other issues such as domestic violence. The evidence is in from countries such as Portugal and Sweden that legalising drug use reduces crime.

The USA has devoted billions of dollars to combat drugs such as cocaine, ice and heroin, and makes no progress whatsoever. It's a losing battle. Just like Prohibition was.

The only caveat I have with legalising all illicit drugs is that when a person commits any crime under the influence of drugs, they are unable to use that as a copout in a court of law. You do the crime, you do the time.

If all drugs were legalised, the profits made by criminal syndicates would evaporate. Addicts would no longer burgle houses and mug people to support their habit. Enormous police resources could then divert to other issues such as domestic violence. The evidence is in from countries such as Portugal and Sweden that legalising drug use reduces crime.

The USA has devoted billions of dollars to combat drugs such as cocaine, ice and heroin, and makes no progress whatsoever. It's a losing battle. Just like Prohibition was.

The only caveat I have with legalising all illicit drugs is that when a person commits any crime under the influence of drugs, they are unable to use that as a copout in a court of law. You do the crime, you do the time.

You state "If ALL drugs were legalised..." And go on as if all drugs were the same. Then you incorrectly quote countries which you say has legalised ALL drugs. A typical "Black or White" mode of thinking. If you'd say some, not all, drugs should be legalised then you'd meet with some approval. But your uneducated attitude to the nature of individual druhs and economic costs to communities is false.

The cost of hospital treatment of diseases for the legal drug called nicotine in Australia, UK and the USA has reached tenfold the tax on it. Now you want to add to that burden drugs such as heroin, which cost these governments a fortune, far outreaching the finances you mention, just to detox and treat with a methadone program. You would add to legalising this drug, amphetamine (speed) and also, the most addictive substance on the planet methamphetamine (Ice), which hae no know treatment, such as methadone or naltrexone has for heroin. That's just the economics of speed and ice addiction, the social costs of of your legalisation would be immense. More metal illnesses such as psychosis, paranoia and paranoid schizophrenia induced people walk our streets and creatimg unthinkable crimes, not because they require money to their freely abailable drugs anymore, but because of the nature of the mental disorders these now "legal' drugs have created.

I would like to invite you to reconsider your attitude to legalising ALL drugs, by educating yourself on the nature and treatment of each individual drug. In other words try to see this area, not so much in Black or White, but in the multitude shades of grey.

Edited February 11, 201610 yr by mankondang

I totally agree with bazza, and believe it is your mode of thinking is floored.

We have a huge drug problem, and making ANY drugs illegal, doesn't work. No matter how dangerous a drug is, it is much better for society and the addict to have them legalized so they can be controlled by the government rather than by criminal drug pushers (as is the current situation now) that don't have any morals to what they sell, and use the profits for corruption, to line their pockets and for terrorism. The more people they can get hooked,and the more addictive the drug is, the greater their profits are. When they are illegal it doesn't stop people buying them on the black market and using them so it serves no purpose having them illegal. It just makes a bad situation 100 times worse.

If you can't keep drugs out of prisons, how the hell do you think you can keep them out of society?

The war on drugs has been a complete failure, and some serious thought needs to be given as to the best way to fix the drug problem. Throwing people in gaol for drugs only serves to make the problem worse, but training them the best way to make sell and import them. Many people who never used drugs develop their habits in prisons.

80 % of people in prisons are in for drug related crime.

Imagine how many prisons could be closed if drugs were decriminalized as a first step and then legalized.

Legalizing them does not mean you condone their use, and then when legal, real education and rehabilitation is possible and people then can decide what they will consume knowing the inherent dangers and sereviry of harm each drug causes. With harm minimization understanding and compassion the horrendous designer drugs can then be controlled. Who do you want to control dangerous drugs, criminals or the state? As I said, they are both terrible, but I would rather the state controlling them than criminals. If you try to limit the amount or type of drugs people can get, that is when the black market moves in and the problem snowballs.

Also it is far better getting people off heroin by slowly reducing the amount they get, then using a far more harmful drug like methadone.

Edited February 11, 201610 yr by aussiebrian

Your reasoning with smoking is also wrong. As smoking is legal, more people have been persuaded to quit in the last decade, that at any other time in history. Do you think this could have been achieved if smoking was illegal?

You only have to look at Prohibition of alcohol to see what happens when drugs are illegal.

People still drink, unfortunately it is socially accepted to be OK, but at least with drink driving campaigns, AA, rehibilition and family violence information and help lines etc, people can and are helped but with the also evil drug alcohol, it was made far worse with prohibition in the 20's and 30's than it is today.

More people die from alcohol and alcohol related events, than all the illegal drugs combined.

Edited February 11, 201610 yr by aussiebrian

Nobody supports criminal activity, and that is not what I argue against. I argue that whilst some drugs may be OK to legalise others are not. I argue that legalising ALL drugs is not the way to go and that both your arguments are based on supposition not facts. Let me give you some facts. The World Health Organisation (WHO) have supplied the following figures on deaths from drugs. Deaths that are caused directly from diseases caused by the drugs.

Nicotine 85%

Alcohol 12.5%

All illegal drugs in total 2.5%

Now you can see legal drugs cause 97.5% of drug deaths from diseases from them. These figures do not take into account driving accident deaths caused by alcohol, or deaths caused by fires from cigarettes. These figures would be far higher if they did. Now you two want to make legal ALL other drugs to add to these statistics. I'm sceptical in that I think when you say smoking is on the decline, that you are stating the truth in Australia, but not in the rest of the world, especially the third world. The reason it is true in Australia is that they adopted an excellent education scheme aimed primarily at the very young some years ago, and now that these young children are grown up the rewards of such education is apparent. Hence my argument to limit the use of harmful illicit drugs lays in the very same place, education not all out legalization.

You throw up the use of AA, etc to treat alcohol and drugs. But that's what it is like method one is to heroine..treatment after use and addiction. Ice and other drugs

has no such treatment. I am all for treatment of drug addicts no problem, but I am also in favour of drug intervention and more so of drug prevention, and I'll repeat that education, and not legalisation, is the best way to minimize drug use.

If you can provide reference, not opinion, to support your argument, then I am more happy to read such.

Nobody supports criminal activity, and that is not what I argue against. I argue that whilst some drugs may be OK to legalise others are not. I argue that legalising ALL drugs is not the way to go and that both your arguments are based on supposition not facts. Let me give you some facts. The World Health Organisation (WHO) have supplied the following figures on deaths from drugs. Deaths that are caused directly from diseases caused by the drugs.

Nicotine 85%

Alcohol 12.5%

All illegal drugs in total 2.5%

Now you can see legal drugs cause 97.5% of drug deaths from diseases from them. These figures do not take into account driving accident deaths caused by alcohol, or deaths caused by fires from cigarettes. These figures would be far higher if they did. Now you two want to make legal ALL other drugs to add to these statistics. I'm sceptical in that I think when you say smoking is on the decline, that you are stating the truth in Australia, but not in the rest of the world, especially the third world. The reason it is true in Australia is that they adopted an excellent education scheme aimed primarily at the very young some years ago, and now that these young children are grown up the rewards of such education is apparent. Hence my argument to limit the use of harmful illicit drugs lays in the very same place, education not all out legalization.

You throw up the use of AA, etc to treat alcohol and drugs. But that's what it is like method one is to heroine..treatment after use and addiction. Ice and other drugs

has no such treatment. I am all for treatment of drug addicts no problem, but I am also in favour of drug intervention and more so of drug prevention, and I'll repeat that education, and not legalisation, is the best way to minimize drug use.

If you can provide reference, not opinion, to support your argument, then I am more happy to read such.

I tend to agree with you. In part.

Ken Lay was one of the most respected Chief Commissioners of Police in Victoria. His comment on the ice epidemic ravaging rural towns across country Victoria was "We can't arrest our way out of this problem." If the authorities recognise the current system of law enforcement is failing, what do you do?

The big question is whether the social cost of legalising all drugs is more or less than what is currently happening. There are criminal syndicates across the globe who are so flush with funds from drug trafficking that their bankrolls approach the GDP of a number of small countries. They can buy politicians, judges and police in some jurisdictions.

It's true there might be an increase in drug-fuelled violence; however, the offset to that is a decrease in crimes committed by addicts desperate to supply their habit.

It's impossible to stop people from experimenting with drugs. If word got around that snorting powdered toad s##T gave a fantastic high, there would be some lining up to try it.

You may be in favour of drug prevention; however, it isn't working. If something doesn't work, it's time to try something else.