Global Study on Illegal Drugs

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Global Study on Illegal Drugs

The Case of Bangkok, Thailand

February 2000

Bangkok Research Team[1]:

Nualnoi Treerat

Noppanun Wannathepsakul

Daniel Ray Lewis

This research project was sponsored by the

United Nations Drug Control Programme

Introduction

Drug Situation in Thailand

Bangkok/Thailand is currently experiencing an amphetamine epidemic. Amphetamine use is widespread. Seizures of amphetamines in the last year are far higher in absolute terms than any other country in the world. The greatest number of users are youths (boys) who use the drugs in groups before engaging in some other activity such as snooker, motorcycle racing, etc. The government has responded and is working hard to suppress drug use, but to little effect. It is even possible that the government’s advertising approach is counterproductive, since in our survey, drug use among youths increased with increased police effort. The production of amphetamines is clearly geared towards children with pills coming in different tastes, smells, and colors. These amphetamine tablets are produced outside the country, mostly in Burma.

Bangkok/Thailand also has a long-term problem with heroin. As is well-known, opium is grown in this area making heroin easily available. Thailand has also played a role as a distribution hub for heroin that is brought to Bangkok and then sent around the world. Due to strong suppression efforts by the government, very little opium is grown in Thailand, but a lot is grown in neighboring countries, especially Burma and Laos. A great deal of heroin still passes through Thailand, and there are still many heroin addicts in Thailand, though overall their number seems to be stable. Users tend to be marginalized members of society who are obvious in their drugged-out appearance. This is in contrast to amphetamine users who appear normal, and who may use drugs socially.

Bangkok/Thailand also has a little spillover use of “high class” drugs such as ecstasy, cocaine, and ketamine, etc. from wealthy countries. These drugs are used at rave parties or discos by the wealthy. They are too expensive to impact the lives of most Thais.

There is also some casual use of marijuana. “Thai” marijuana, which may not always be grown in Thailand, is quite popular outside of Thailand. The use in Thailand is not too great, which may be a result of stiff repression of what is actually a quite mild drug.

Bangkok and Thailand seem to have escaped some of the negative side effects of drug use, in particular violence. There is not much of a history of violence in Thailand of any sort. In Bangkok, there is very little violence that can be associated with drugs. Buyers seem to be able to get enough drugs to support their habit without resorting to violence or robbery. Perhaps that is because drugs are reasonably cheap here, close to the source of production in Burma. Probably it is also because amphetamines are not truly addictive, and if the money is not sufficient, they need not be bought.

There is also little violence from rival gangs as the distribution network is quite decentralized with many separate channels for bringing and distributing drugs from the north.

Interestingly, corruption among police may also help limit violence by tacitly licensing the drug trade. Generally, each seller must pay a fee to the police in their street so that the police will “look the other way”. If another seller enters the market, the first seller may have the option of reporting the second seller to the police who then arrests the second seller on normal drug charges. Another effect of corruption is that there is little interaction (outside of bribes) between local police and the drug pushers. If the police don’t start a fight, why should the sellers start it?

Amphetamine use is very widespread in Bangkok. One taxi driver stated it this way “There are 10,000 little side streets in Bangkok. You can buy amphetamines on every single one of them.” Drug use is also not especially an urban phenomenon in Thailand. Drug use is just as prevalent in other parts of the country, with some regions being worse, and others better.

Amphetamines are viewed as a serious problem, both by the government and by the population. They are not accepted as a matter of course. However, there may be significantly different perceptions by different generations, with parents being very concerned that their kids are using drugs, and kids thinking that amphetamines are not a serious problem.

The physical risk from amphetamines seems to be small. Most of the risk of using amphetamines is from being caught, wasting money, and most especially, wasting the opportunity to do something better with their lives. This author’s opinion is that the amphetamine epidemic is likely a fashion, that will fade in coming years. Nevertheless, the sheer magnitude of the problem is cause for alarm. Thai youth will probably move on to something else. Could that be another drug, or another anti-social behavior? Certainly it is possible, but we don’t know. As an aside, this author is also interested in going to try amphetamines now that I have heard so much about it. Such is the power of fads.

In summary, Bangkok/Thailand is currently experiencing an amphetamine epidemic mostly amongst its youth. Amphetamines are used mostly as a social drug. Some of the worst aspects of drug epidemics are not in evidence in Thailand, with little violence, but with a commensurate rise in drug-related corruption as sellers, and sometimes buyers, pay off the police.

Thailand shares extensive borders with some of the largest producers in the world of both amphetamines and heroin in the world. Despite great success at suppressing the production of illegal drugs of all kinds within its borders, Thailand’s location makes drugs both cheap and easily available. This is likely to continue for some time into the future.

Research Objectives

1. To investigate the decisions made by illicit drug consumers, producers and distributors – the actors that constitute the illegal drug market.

2. To provide a rigorous basis for the development of drug policies for both national and international level.

3. To prepare a comprehensive study of the illicit drug market in Bangkok as a part of the UNDCP cross-city analysis.

Research Methodologies

This research was prepared on the basis of both primary and secondary research methodologies. Secondary research consisted of an extensive literature review of related documents, past research and surveys, and recent unpublished papers, as well as evidence from the popular press. Primary research included a survey, a number of interviews, and a focus group discussion. Primary research took up approximately 80% of this team’s work effort, and secondary research about 20 percent. The primary research work can be described as follow:

Cross-sectional survey

The selection of the population and the samples for the survey were done using the “judgmental sampling” technique. The “probability sample” technique could not be adopted because due to the illicit nature of drug use, sampling from the total drug user population is not feasible. The largest group of drug dependents who are systematically available is the treatment client group. Of this group, heroin dependents make heavy use of treatment services while other drug addicts, such as amphetamine and marijuana users, do so much less frequently. Recently however, the court has been sending drug addicts of all sorts for treatment at full-cycle treatment centers. In our survey, more samples were correspondingly selected from the treatment centers with the full 4-stages of the treatment cycle. More samples were also selected from public hospitals and those private organizations with sufficient clients addicted to amphetamines.

The 177 participants in our survey were from eight different treatment and rehabilitation facilities located in Bangkok. Of these, 10 cases, or 5.6%, were chosen from private clinics, 36 cases, or 20.3%, were drawn from non-government treatment and rehabilitation facilities, and 131 cases, or 74.0%, came from public hospitals.

Interviews with users

In-depth interviews were carried out with 13 participants in the illegal drug market: 3 heroin users, 8 amphetamine sellers, and 2 amphetamine users at the Klong Prem prison, Communita Introtro at Phatum Thani, and the New Life Project under the Duang Prateep Foundation at Lamae, Chumporn.

Interviews with experts

Interviews were completed with high-ranking officers from the Office of Narcotics Control Board, the head of the Office of Narcotics Suppression Center and some high-level enforcement officers from the Royal Thai Police Department. On the treatment and rehabilitation side, our team interviewed authorities at the Thanyarak hospital and the New Life Project under Duang Prateep Foundation. Interviews were also conducted with experts from Institute of Health Research, Chulalongkorn University, and from the Narcotics Control Division, the Food and Drug Administration, the Chief Advisor of the governor of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, and key personnel who work on drug issues at the 99.5 FM radio station.

Focus group

A focus group was organized with representatives from the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration’s drug-control operation team, community leaders from drug sensitive areas, and members of non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Limitations of the Research

Some biases exist in our survey. Firstly, the survey may more heavily represent the poor than the rich. Most of the rich undergo treatment at private hospitals, but private hospitals refuse to cooperate in contacting or arranging interviews with clients. Secondly, treatment centers must be of sufficient size and have clients who use both heroin and amphetamines to be selected. The third, and biggest bias however, is that the survey is slanted towards the type of drug users who end up in treatment centers. These will tend to use drugs more heavily than the general drug using population, and perhaps are more likely to be pushers (more likely to be caught), or have more means of entering treatment than the general population.

Current official records relating to drugs from the public authorities are diffused or not available at all. It takes several years for these records to be published and made public. Therefore, some quantitative data could only be presented incompletely.

Few government officers have a clear understanding of the current drug situation in Thailand. Interviews, in many circumstances, mistakenly led us in the wrong direction. After all, every piece of information was checked and represented in the report.

Outline

This report consists of the following parts.

Introduction

Chapter 1: Supply

Chapter 2: Demand

Chapter 3: Market Clearing Mechanisms

Conclusions and Policy Recommendations

Appendix I: The Questionnaire

Appendix II: Narcotics Control Laws

Appendix III: Drug Related Information.

Chapter 1 discusses the supply of drugs to Bangkok, including both the production stage in Burma, and the supply to, and within Bangkok. Chapter 2 contains the results of our questionnaire about drug use in Bangkok. It also gives considerable information about demand for illegal drugs in Bangkok. Chapter 3 gives information about the price and quality of illegal drugs in Bangkok, and then discusses the market structure at different levels of the supply chain. It also contains data about the estimated profits to different members of the supply chain. The conclusions and policy recommendations section tries to distill some of our insights from conducting this research. Finally the appendices give related information that does not easily fit into the general text of the paper.

Chapter 1 Supply

Supply of Illicit Drugs in the Bangkok Area

The illicit drug market has become much more diversified in the 1990s, in terms of type of drug, supply channels, demand (users) and form of distribution. The share of heroin in the illicit drug market has declined while the share of the stimulant drug, methamphetamine, has increased. At this time, methamphetamine and heroin are the major illicit drugs in Bangkok and Thailand.

This chapter aims at explaining the sources of supply of important illicit drugs in Bangkok. The chapter explains the main points of the existing market structure, with an emphasis on the supply side. The nature of the illicit drug enterprises that supply Bangkok market is described. This includes the size of the organization, the supply network, connection with other illegal activities, financial credit system, and the structure of the market. For the production side, the methods they employ to produce drugs, trafficking route, and the characteristics of the drug traffickers are discussed. Finally, the sensitive area of illicit drug market in Bangkok area is discussed.

I. Dynamism of the illicit drug supply in Thailand.

Amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS)

The synthetic substances or amphetamine-type stimulant includes amphetamine, methamphetamine and ecstasy-type substances. Trends on the extent of production, trafficking and consumption of ATS continued to rise sharply in Thailand during the past 20 years. The history of ATS market in Thailand can be divided into 4 periods[2].

1) The amphetamine period (before 1980)

Amphetamine was first marketed as over-the-counter (OTC) synthetic medulla stimulant drug in 1955. Amphetamines are known locally as yaa ma, literally translated as “horse pill”. Initially the pills were imported and imprinted with the picture of a “horse head” on the one side and “London” on the other side. Amphetamine was orally administered widely among unskilled labors and truck drivers on long cross country routes. The pills were mainly taken for work. It enabled a person to work non-stop over a long period of time without feeling tired.