PILLS FOLLOW A PATH INTO THAILAND BLAZED BY HEROIN

Burma's New Export/Methamphetamine Menace

BANGKOK - When the Thai police arrested a housewife the other day for
selling banned methamphetamine stimulant pills outside a provincial hospital
not far from Bangkok, they made further inquiries.

The police found that the woman, who they said had 110,000 methamphetamine
tablets in her possession, was married to Prayut Sanan, an executioner in
the Bang Kwang maximum security prison, where 130 convicts are on death row
awaiting execution by shooting for various crimes including drug
trafficking, armed robbery, rape and murder.

The police said that a search of Mr. Prayut's Bangkok home, and his car in
the prison parking lot, yielded another 700,000 tablets, four pistols and an
assault rifle.

Pornsak Durongkhaviboon, chief of the national police, said that the arrest
of Mr. Prayut and several alleged accomplices, including a Bang Kwang warder
and a former policeman, confirmed reports that the drug trade in Thailand
was flourishing even inside prisons.

At about the same time as these arrests were made late last week, the police
separately raided a Bangkok warehouse and seized 7 million methamphetamine
pills hidden in sacks of garlic and shallots.

Thai and foreign officials say that both incidents are signs of a rapid
increase in the past few years in the illegal sale and use of strong
amphetamine-type stimulants, or ATS, in Thailand, as increased unemployment
and social tension arising from the East Asian economic crisis and the
swelling migration of poor rural workers to the cities in search of jobs and
a better life has coincided with a major change in drug smuggling from
Burma.

Long notorious for production of opium and its highly addictive derivative,
heroin, several drug-trafficking organizations in Burma - each with its own
territory and army - have switched to the manufacture of methamphetamine
because it is easier to produce and conceal in tablet form than heroin and
just as profitable, narcotics officials and analysts say.

''The pills are small and easy to hide,'' said Sandro Calvani, the
representative in Thailand of the United Nations International Drug Control
Program. ''They are very user-friendly for traffickers.''

Police estimate that about 600 million methamphetamine tablets were smuggled
into Thailand in 1999 across the 2,000-kilometer (1,200-mile) border with
Burma. Much of the frontier is mountainous, heavily forested and difficult
to patrol.

Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai of Thailand told a recent international
conference on drug control in Bangkok that the spread of amphetamine-type
stimulants in Thailand was happening at such an ''alarming'' rate that it
was a threat not only to the country's social fabric and economic growth but
also to its political stability and security.

''This menace is further complicated by the huge profit the trade generates,
leading to a host of other problems, from corruption to money laundering,
and transnational organized crime to international terrorism,'' he added.

Officials representing Burma, which has an uneasy relationship with
Thailand, said at the same conference that the military government in
Rangoon was doing its best to suppress drug production in border regions.

The main methamphetamine manufacturer in Burma is the self-styled United Wa
State Army, which can call on about 15,000 well-armed soldiers to protect
its jungle-based drug producing facilities and smuggling routes, Thai and
foreign officials said.

Like several other similar armed groups based on ethnic minorities that
claim autonomy or independence from Rangoon, this group operates in Burma's
remote and rugged eastern Shan state bordering Thailand, China and Laos.

''Although the UWSA remains heavily involved in the heroin trade, it is also
Asia's principal methamphetamine producer,'' said Thomas Wersto, a narcotics
analyst in the U.S. State Department in Washington. ''The UWSA is largely
responsible for helping to fuel abuse of that drug in neighboring Thailand.
Moreover, UWSA methamphetamine increasingly is appearing in other parts of
Asia.''

ALTHOUGH the Wa have declared that their territory will be drug-free by
2005, Mr. Wersto said that the United States, which receives as much as 20
percent of its illicit heroin from Burma, saw no indication that the United
Wa State Army was intending to leave the drug trade.

''Indeed, it may be attempting to position itself for the future by
broadening its base of products,'' he said. ''Should the UWSA have a poor
opium crop, it can replace lost revenues by increasing its methamphetamine
output or turning to other ATS.''

Such drugs can be produced from a variety of cheap substances, including
ephedrine imported mainly from China and India. Ephedrine is widely used in
the legal manufacture of pills for treating allergies.

William Snipes, a narcotics attache at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, said
that some of the pharmaceutical machinery being used in the illegal
manufacture of methamphetamine tablets was very sophisticated and needed a
reliable supply of electricity to operate.

''But apart from that, making methamphetamine is not a very complicated
process,'' he said. ''If you can read, you should be able to do it.''

Over 600,000 Thais, out of a population of 60 million, are reportedly
addicted to the drug. Many others are said to use the drug occasionally or
be involved in its illegal trade as sellers.

''The new ATS epidemic has become a deep-rooted problem,'' said Vichai
Poshyachinda, a drug dependence researcher at Chulalongkorn University's
Institute of Health. ''It is overwhelming Thailand's efforts to reduce both
supply and demand.''

He and other researchers say that the use of amphetamine-type stimulants
started with workers who wanted to stay awake and alert for much longer
periods to earn more money.

But these stimulants have become a fashionable drug of choice for young
people seeking more energy, concentration and excitement. Methamphetamines
cost around 40 Thai baht, or just under one U.S. dollar, per tablet.

''Methamphetamines are everywhere,'' said Joseph Maier, director of the
Human Development Foundation that does social work in Bangkok's slums.

''Every home knows the game,'' he said. ''Pushers and sellers are your
neighbors; sometimes your own family. You can buy drugs as easily as a bag
of potato chips.''