THAILAND'S LOVE OF DRUGS EXACTS A HEAVY TOLL

Bangkok (AFP) - It has been a week since Busaba Wetsaten last took yaa baa,
which means crazy drug in Thai.

For six years she was one of more than two million users of the
methamphetamine in Thailand, where authorities say the pill is taken more
frequently than in any other country in the world.

Now the strained 22-year-old wears a pink hospital uniform, sleeps in a
bleak dormitory and allows nurses at Thanyarak Hospital's drug
detoxification programme to order her days.

"I had a private problem and I had no one to consult, so I turned to drugs
to make me forget. But I could only forget for a while," she says softly.

Busaba is a student, like many of the Thais who use the highly addictive
yaa baa, which is derived from amphetamines.

Of Thailand's three million drug users, up to 70 per cent of them use
methamphetamines, according to Office of Narcotics Control Board deputy
secretary-general Chartchai Suthiklom.

The use of the drug has doubled in Thailand since 1996. There were 33
million amphetamine users across the world in the late 1990s and two-thirds
of them were in Asia abusing methamphetamines, says the UN Office on Drugs
and Crime.

Statistics such as these likely prompted the Thai government, which already
imposes the death penalty for some drug offences, to declare a three-month
war on drugs from February 1. Since then, 588 suspects have been killed in
mafia-style shootings by drug gang members wanting to stop traffickers from
talking to authorities, according to Thailand's Interior Ministry.

Police, meanwhile, say 22 suspects have been shot dead by police in
self-defence in the first 20 days of the crackdown.

Over the same period, more than 21,000 people were arrested, 8.5 million
methamphetamine tablets seized, and property and cash worth US$5.5 million
(HK$43 million) confiscated from alleged traffickers, they say.

The huge number of deaths has prompted an outpouring of concern from human
rights groups, but the government is doggedly pressing on.

Thai officials estimate one billion methamphetamine pills will be smuggled
in this year, mostly from factories dotting the Myanmar side of the
military-ruled country's border with Thailand.

The government says the price of the drug has skyrocketed since the start
of the crackdown - up to 200 baht (HK$36) in Bangkok - more than the daily
minimum wage.

For Busaba, it is the soaring price of the drug that will undermine the
success of the anti-drugs campaign by luring more people into the trade.

"Selling drugs is a good way to earn a lot of money. Even with the
crackdown, [traffickers] could run away for a while, wait for things to
calm down, and then start selling again," she says.