Every month crime statistics are published in the Phuket Gazette. While arrests for petty gambling usually head the list, the figures for drug-related offences and in particular, for dealing in methamphetamines, are much more disturbing. Indeed, Bertil Lintner and Michael Black, the joint authors of Merchants of Madness, call this national trend an ‘explosion’ – and they are not given to overstatement. – citing an array of figures to buttress their argument: for example, 95-9 million pills seized in 2002. Since each tablet costs the price of a couple of beers in a local bar, it is hardly surprisingly that there were, in 1996, already 247,965 registered addicts in Thailand.That figure is now much higher.
Of course there is a long history of drug use and abuse in S.E. Asia, especially in and around the ironically named ‘Golden Triangle’, where the borders of Thailand, Burma and Laos intersect. Poppies, easy to grow in such a blissful climate, have always provided a ready source of raw opium, a drug smoked in ‘dens’ for centuries. Recently ousted by its lethal derivative, heroin, that drug has been, in its turn, largely supplanted in popularity by yaba [methamphetamine].
The book is impressively researched and here as elsewhere, the statistics tell the tale. In 1990 only 3.7% of arrests were related to yaba; in 2000 almost 80% of indictments concerned the buying, selling and marketing of methamphetamines. The reasons are not hard to find. Since yaba is a synthetic product, the number of chemical precursors are fewer than those needed to produce a complex, plant-based, organic drug such as heroin. It is also much cheaper to produce – about ten baht a tablet – and it does not require an infra-structure of farmers to provide the raw material. All that is needed is a small laboratory.
Perceived as less dangerous than heroin, yaba has rapidly reached a much wider market, in part because, unlike heroin, it is an ‘upper’, that is to say a drug that gives an immediate ‘buzz’ or ‘high’ when ‘snorted’, or heated and inhaled in vaporized form. Taking a tablet takes longer – apparently….Moreover, unlike heroin, it is a social drug that is usually taken in groups, and it is associated mainly with the younger generation – aged from 14 to 25. Especially in Thailand. Reputed to boost confidence, yaba is also said to ‘increase sexual energy and prowess’. But it has serious downsides: it can lead to aggressive, even psychopathic behavior. The depressions that follow can, in extreme cases, lead to suicide. A number of murders have been put down to yaba addiction, not to mention unsolved hit-and run crimes. And it is frequently addictive.
Inevitably, the yaba cult has also spawned social abuses: the selling of sexual services by young boys and girls to support their habit ; bosses’ deliberate encouragement of yaba taking among poor migrant labourers and fishermen to make them work harder – the original name of the drug – yama – meant ‘{work like a} horse drug’. Many of these indigent workers ended up as hopeless addicts. It has also meant the growth of a youth gang culture, especially in the north, where drug-taking is more prevalent. According to the authors, one motor-bike gang called The Samurai patrols the streets after dark brandishing swords; another girl-gang in Chaing Mai called The Vampires has 180 members whose professed aim is to ‘sleep with as many boys as they can’.
Of course, the real villains are not the kids on the streets, but the drug barons in the Golden Triangle [and closer to home] who launder all their ill-gotten black money, usually by investing it in casinos that further increase their wealth. Ironically, the Thai bosses were the very people targeted, but in fact barely touched, by Thaksin’s notorious ‘war on drugs’ in 2003. Ostensibly aimed at drug dealers, this indiscriminate and publicity-conscious campaign resulted in the death of 2,590 people, many of them totally innocent.
So much for the current situation. However, Merchants of Madness, despite its sensational title, is much more than a resume of recent trends and events. Indeed, it consistently eschews sensationalism in favor of sober facts and observations, mostly related to a detailed analysis of the narcotics trade of the Golden Triangle. To put this trade in context, the authors delve deeply into the history and politics of the entire region over the last fifty years, a tangled web of corrupt governments, tribal loyalties, warlords [and warladies] and insurrections which have all , in their own ways, contributed to the explosion of this dirty business. As the authors observe: ‘Drug production will always flourish in a black market economy; a black market is the inevitable consequence of a failing economy such as Burma’s – the Burmese way to socialism in effect delivered the economy into the hands of the drug traffickers’.
Some of these ‘players’ have become obscenely rich. Wei Xuegang, from a family of ethnic Chinese, is described as the ‘real merchant of madness’. Sentenced to death in absentia by a Thai court, he is the ‘heroin kingpin and overlord of most of the methamphetamine production in the Golden Triangle’. He lives in isolated splendour in a 30 million dollar mansion, and leads a private army – the United Wa State Army [UWSA] that controls the whole surrounding area. There are other key players, the Bao brothers, for instance, and Lin Mingxian. All are enormously wealthy, above the law, and without moral scruples of any kind.
If there is nothing to admire about these dealers in human misery, there is much to applaud in Messrs Lintner and Black’s account. That they have written more than twenty learned articles on related topics means that their full-length analysis has a quiet air of authority. Even-handed in its pronouncements, it conveys a strong sense of indignation about corruption and cruelty: to wit a Burmese military rule that systematically subjects ethnic minorities to rape and relocation. The writers concede that Thailand is a very different case, but are surprisingly sympathetic to the police here who, they argue, are so poorly paid that they cannot survive without ‘tea’ or ‘coffee money’. One personal regret: I wish the authors had found space to consider the clinical aspects of yaba addiction : its long term effects on the human psyche and on subsequent patterns of behavior. But maybe that is another book….
In the end, they are adamant about where both problem and solution reside: ‘the future stability of the whole region depends on a solution to Burma’s decades long ethnic conflict… it affects everyone – from yaba addicts to the victims of their crazed habits; from governments struggling to come to terms with corruption to financial institutions tarnished by the flow of black money. No one is left untouched by the wiles of these merchants of madness’.
Merchants of Madness: The Methamphetamine Explosion in the Golden Triangle is published by Silkworm Books.
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