NO END IN SIGHT FOR DRUGS WAR DESPITE THAIS' BEST EFFORTS

BANGKOK - Friday is Family Day at Bangkok's Thanyarak Hospital and dozens
of adolescent amphetamine addicts are trying to work through things with
their parents.

Over at Bang Kwan Prison, it is 4 pm and the convicted pill pushers on
Death Row are holding their breath and listening for the warders' footsteps.

If any of them are to be executed by machine gun, this is when they will
find out.

On the western Thai-Myanmar border, another Thai army patrol is scanning
the jungled groves and steep mountain tracks for human 'mules' smuggling in
multi-coloured pills from drug laboratories across the border.

In the bid to rid itself of the scourge of drugs, Thailand is using every
weapon at its disposal: Suppression, punishment, prevention and rehabilitation.

From state-of-the-art therapeutic counselling sessions to get-tough
pledges to execute more traffickers, the challenge posed by the spread of
drugs is being met with an ever-expanding list of responses - and yet the
cancer continues to eat away at Thai society.

Last week, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told journalists there
were an estimated two million drug users among Thailand's population of 60
million.

Despite the shocking figures, to US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
officials operating from their Bangkok headquarters, Thailand is the model
citizen of South-east Asia's anti-drug community.

With US support over decades, it has virtually eradicated opium poppy
growing in the north. But methamphetamine - 'ice' to its users - is proving
to be an altogether more challenging menace.

Where opium poppy fields can be spotted by aircraft surveillance or
satellites, the synthetic chemical stimulant is produced easily in
basements, in converted toilets or mobile jungle labs.

It is cheap to make and easy to transport.

Upon coming to power in January, Mr Thaksin vowed a war on drugs. His
commitment is genuine, even if much of the groundwork had been laid by
previous administrations.

He got off to a quick start. Chairing a northern workshop that pulled
together various anti-narcotics agencies, fingers were pointed at the
ethnic Chinese Wa just a few kilometres away in Myanmar, provoking a sharp
response from Yangon.

In April, the first of what was promised to be a series of publicised
executions sent four drug traffickers - two Thai and two foreign - to the
death chamber, their final moments played out before the media.

Weekly executions were pledged and legal changes suggested to prevent
traffickers from appealing to the King to spare their lives.

Soon, the army will take in addicts at boot camps designed to wean them off
the habit, expanding an approach that began under the last government.

And the prosecutors' office is examining legislation that would give the
police more powers to fight drug pushers. Wire-tapping, plea-bargaining,
witness protection and racketeering laws are all being considered.

America's most senior Bangkok-based DEA official, narcotics attache William
Snipe, said: 'Without a conspiracy law, a co-defendant can't testify and
say what happened and the only plea bargaining in Thailand is to escape the
death penalty by admitting guilt.'

Furthermore, without a witness-protection programme, witnesses are unlikely
to squeal on their underworld bosses if they are likely to be killed by a
hitman.

Also, the lack of wiretapping legislation means that there is little chance
of catching the Mr Bigs.

In the absence of such laws, Mr Snipe believes that there is little chance
that Thailand's powerful drug-lords will be prosecuted.

'I think enforcement-wise, they are doing a great job but I think if they
had better laws they would do a much better job. They are hard-working
guys,' he said.

At the Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB), the state agency

responsible for coordinating the drugs fight, Deputy Secretary General
Rasamee Vistavath agreed the amendments were needed.

There were more plans to help addicts, too, with the government considering
compulsory rehabilitation for users caught with more than 25 pills.

Thailand was already working across the board to beat narcotics abuse.
Anti-money laundering laws introduced in 1999 now allow police to trace the
narcotics profits back to the drug lords.

So far 50 million baht (S$1.6 million) in cash, jewellery, vehicles and
land has been seized in 33 cases from suspects involved in carrying or
laundering dirty money, mostly involving drugs. The Anti-Money Laundering
Office (AMLO) Deputy Secretary General, Pol Col Yuthabool Dissamarn, said
his office was setting the example for other countries in the region, which
for the most part do not have such legislation.

Australian and US experts were also about to start training AMLO officers
on how to use sophisticated software to filter and examine suspicious bank
transactions.

All financial transactions over two million baht must now be reported to AMLO.

But Thailand faces an enormous challenge. More than 70 per cent of the
200,000 people in prison are there for drug-related offences, and there is
hardly a community untouched by amphetamine abuse. Even Buddhist monks are
being disrobed for popping pills.

Despite Thailand's best efforts, the country's community leaders, volunteer
border forces, hospital and prison psychiatrists, charitable organisations
and welfare staff face an almost impossible challenge.

Situated next to Myanmar, there is nothing the authorities can do about the
drug labs run by the ethnic Chinese Wa and trying to stop the flow of
hundreds of millions of tablets is next to impossible.

Thailand's network of roads makes it ideal for transnational trafficking,
while the breakdown of family life and community has left its adolescents
particularly vulnerable to peer pressure and depression.

Thailand's experience could prove a foretaste of what is beginning to
happen in Yunan, Southern China, and in South-east Asia, particularly
Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.

These countries have yet to undergo the massive societal changes resulting
from urbanisation and capitalisation that in Thailand turned its truck and
taxi drivers, its labourers, and finally its young people on to the
energy-boosting stimulants initially nicknamed yaa maa - 'crazy horse drug'
- - for the strength and alertness they gave.

Despite signing up to a United Nations pledge to make Asean a drug- free
zone by 2015, most international drug enforcers privately acknowledge this
to be impossible. 'Drugs will always be with us,' said one.

Across Thailand, 700 hospitals treat addicts. The ONCB said last year there
were 5,000 new psychosis cases arising from drug abuse.

At Bangkok's Thanyarak Hospital, psychiatrist Angoon Patarakorn heads the
Detoxification Department. The hospital has 670 beds and is solely devoted
to freeing people, mostly adolescents, from their addictions.

Dr Angoon believes the family is crucial to recovery and on Fridays, he
asks addicts to share their problems with their parents.

'The main problem of amphetamine addiction among children comes because
they do not know what to do with their lives,' he says.

'Families do not have enough time for their children and in schools, there
are not enough hobbies or sports and they are stressed by exams. So many
get depressed and take amphetamines for relief,' he adds.

Ultimately, most of those involved in fighting narcotics believe the battle
will only be won when the individual is armed with the power to say no.