RIVAL TO HEROIN IS THAILAND'S NEW NEMESIS

MAE SAI, Thailand - Here in the Golden Triangle, amid jungles and the
legacies of heroin and death, Thailand has mobilized its army against
smugglers who are flooding this country with a devilish drug known as yaba,
or crazy medicine.

Few countries have moved more aggressively or successfully against heroin
than Thailand. Once a major producer, the country no longer grows enough
opium to satisfy the demands of its own addicts.

But just as Thai officials were prepared to declare victory in the war
against drugs, yaba surfaced as a new threat, addicting as many as 1
million Thais and wreaking social havoc throughout the country.

"I think we can win some of the war against drugs but not all of it,"
Sorasit Sangprasert, Thailand's top anti-narcotics officer, said in the
capital, Bangkok. "Once we find a solution for one drug, another drug
appears. It's like squeezing a balloon. One bulge disappears, and another
springs up."

Yaba is the local name for a form of methamphetamine, similar to speed,
that is usually smoked but can be ingested or injected.

It has been available in small quantities for decades in Thailand. It did
not become widely popular, particularly among students, until a few years
ago, when the region's economic crisis and Thailand's anti-drug campaign
changed the pattern of drug use and distribution in Southeast Asia.

With money tight, drug addicts started looking for a cheaper alternative to
heroin, and recreational users for a quick hit to wipe away the gloom. And
with Thailand closing down many smuggling routes along its border, drug
barons in neighboring Myanmar wanted to find a high-profit narcotic that
was easier to produce and distribute than heroin.

Yaba fit the bill so perfectly that today it is close to dethroning heroin
as the trademark of the Golden Triangle, the mountainous region that took
its name during the Vietnam War as the world's greatest producer of opium.
The area includes portions of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. Thai authorities
estimate that 1.4% of the nation's teenage students are addicted to drugs.
Eighty percent of the teenage users say yaba is their drug of choice.

"If you'd been here five years ago, you'd just have seen bamboo shacks,"
said Pronthep Iamprapai, Thailand's senior anti-narcotics officer for the
Golden Triangle, who stood on a hill surveying this modern town and, just
across the river in Myanmar, the equally bustling town of Tach Liek. "These
are towns that yaba built."

Anti-narcotics officials say as many as 15 million yaba tablets a month are
flooding into Thailand from Myanmar, formerly called Burma, often with the
connivance of Thai dealers. Each pill, which costs about 3 cents to
produce, can fetch as much as $5 in Bangkok, about 450 miles south of Mae
Sai. Most are used domestically, though modest quantities are exported to
the Middle East, Singapore, Malaysia and other places where Thai laborers
work under contract.

Smuggling is profitable and difficult to stop: Thailand and Myanmar share a
1,300-mile border, and an individual porter can cram about 100,000 yaba
tablets into a backpack. But Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, who
considers drugs a threat to national security, has run out of patience and
sent the army to the border to work with anti-narcotics police units. Since
January, at least 20 Myanmar smugglers have been killed and millions of
yaba tablets seized in firefights that often rage for hours in the border
area.

"As of now, there is no need to talk. Why should we talk?" asked Gen.
Chetta Thanajaro, security advisor to the Thai Interior Ministry. "If they
cross into Thailand on one leg, we will shoot that leg. If they cross on
two legs, we will shoot two legs."

In the isolated, jungle-covered border region between this town and Chiang
Rai, about 40 miles south, the Thais set night ambushes and run patrols out
of six-person, sandbagged outposts. Their enemy is Myanmar's 20,000-member
United Wa State Army, which has expanded its heroin empire to include yaba.
Western anti-narcotics agents in Thailand say the United Wa force is among
the world's largest and best-armed drug-dealing organizations.

The Wa, an ethnic minority, fought Myanmar's government for years to
establish a communist state but signed a cease-fire with the country's
ruling generals in 1990. In return for ending the rebellion, Wa leader Wei
Hsueh-kang has been allowed to run Myanmar's Shan state as a fiefdom, even
though Thailand sentenced him in absentia to death in 1987 for
masterminding a shipment of 1,500 pounds of heroin, and Washington has
offered a $2-million bounty for his arrest. Wei contends that the group's
income is generated by diamond mines, not illegal drugs.

Whatever the source of money, there's plenty of it. Wei has built a paved
highway that runs roughly parallel to the Thai border to facilitate
smuggling, the Thais say. He also oversaw the construction of Mong Yawn, a
modern border town in Myanmar with schools and clinics, and outfitted the
United Wa State Army with AK-47s, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades
and night-vision equipment.

"This is no ragtag guerrilla army," said Thai Police Maj. Rang Intana.
"They're well-trained, well-armed and very good, tough soldiers."

Despite the explosive growth of yaba, which is easily manufactured from
chemicals in fairly crude and portable jungle laboratories, the Golden
Triangle still produces more than 2,000 tons of raw opium a year. That
translates into 200 tons of heroin, or about 60% of the world's annual
supply. What has changed in the past decade is that Thailand and Laos now
produce only modest quantities for domestic use. That leaves Myanmar as the
triangle's sole drug superpower.

Thailand banned opium smoking in 1952 and has worked closely with the U.S.
since 1963 to battle heroin. It has given farmers incentives to turn land
used for poppy production into fields for corn, beans and coffee and
recently increased its anti-drug budget by 60%, to $4.5 million a year.
Parliament is expected to pass a money-laundering bill soon aimed at drug
dealers.

Although less than 500 acres are still cultivated for poppies in Thailand,
the country remains an important transit route for heroin. But Thailand's
aggressive anti-drug efforts have forced Myanmar's drug barons to seek new
distribution routes.

Thai officials estimate that they intercept only 1 in 10 yaba tablets that
cross the border from Myanmar. "We've only gone the first mile in a long
journey," said one drug enforcement officer.