US SAYS SPEED IS WORST DRUG MENACE

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Methamphetamine, also known as speed, is the worst
drug menace facing the United States and a growing threat in Asia, the U.S.
drug control chief said Friday.

Criminal organizations that produce heroin have found that methamphetamine
is easy to make and offers bigger profits, said Barry McCaffrey, the White
House national drug policy director.

Stimulants also pose a huge threat in Thailand, China, Vietnam, Hong Kong
and Japan, he said in Bangkok, on the last leg of a three-nation Asian tour.

His eight-day tour seeks to promote international cooperation against the
complex criminal networks that dominate the trade in illegal drugs.

McCaffrey, in Thailand after stops in China and Vietnam - the first made to
those countries by a U.S. drug policy chief, met with Prime Minister Chuan
Leekpai, narcotics chiefs, army and police officials.

Thailand regards methamphetamine, mostly produced by ethnic armies in
neighboring Myanmar, as its biggest social menace and national security
threat. Myanmar is also known as Burma.

McCaffrey said law enforcement worldwide needs to respond to the threat
posed by synthetic drugs that can be made by small producers, not just the
major criminal organizations.

They pose a new challenge to Thailand - which with Laos and Myanmar make up
Southeast Asia's opium-producing Golden Triangle - after its "enormous
success" in the past 20 years in reducing cultivation of opium, the raw
material of heroin, and combatting addiction to that drug.

McCaffrey said methamphetamine has become the dominant drug problem in the
United States, "in South Carolina, Hawaii, Georgia and the central part of
our agricultural states."

Most of the methamphetamine available in the United States is produced in
Mexico and California, he said.

McCaffrey noted that ecstasy, a euphoria-inducing hallucinogen chemically
similar to methamphetamine and widely available in the United States and
Europe, is spreading to countries like Thailand and China.

In a sign of its spread in Southeast Asia, Malaysian authorities this week
seized ecstasy pills and synthetic drugs worth $68 million in the country's
biggest narcotics haul, according to Malaysian news reports Friday. Eleven
people were arrested.

On the eve of McCaffrey's' visit, a cache of chemicals - enough to produce
72 million methamphetamine pills - was seized Thursday at the Thai-Myanmar
border, Thai authorities said Friday.

Thai narcotics authorities estimate that 600 million methamphetamine pills
will be smuggled into Thailand from Myanmar this year.