Homepage > Thai Youth Issues > Thailand's 'ya baa' crisis claiming younger victims

Nov 12th, 2001 Times of India

BANGKOK: When Supabun Kosum took her first methamphetamine tablet she was a curious 18-year-old schoolgirl wanting only "to test" if the little orange pill delivered the euphoria and invincibility her friends raved about.

But her schoolyard experimentation with the drug in Thailand's northern Nakhon Sawan province touched off a seven-year addiction that would consume her life and her income and eventually land her in hospital.

"I bought them every day, in the morning and at night, and took them with my friends," she said. "It gave me energy and good feelings. At midnight we would go dancing and use it," she said.

The cheap drug known in Thailand as ya baa, or crazy medicine, has swept the country in recent years and created a new generation of addicts wary of syringe-injected heroin and eager to mimic Western "rave" culture.

An estimated 800 million tablets were trafficked in Thailand in 2000, up from 100 million in 1998, while some 25,000 pills are sold daily in some Bangkok neighborhoods, according to the United Nations.

Some three to four million Thais, from a population of 62 million, use the drug and addicts can be found everywhere from primary schools to nightclubs.

Authorities say that one in every 10 of the kingdom's Buddhist monks and novices have fallen prey to drug abuse and sought treatment at rehabilitation centers.

The pills come mainly from jungle laboratories in neighboring Myanmar that churn out vast quantities of the cheap stimulant which was used mostly by truck drivers before 1997 when it became popular as a recreational drug.

Supabun joined a growing number of recreational ya baa users being treated for addiction and has spent the past 11 months at Thailand's largest drug rehabilitation center, Bangkok's Thanyarak Hospital.

"We have about 700 (rehabilitation) patients at this hospital and about 80 per cent of them are methamphetamine patients," said hospital director Boonruang Triruangworawat.

"Five years ago, the number of methamphetamine patients was about 30 percent, but it rapidly increased to 40 per cent, 50 per cent and in recent years to 70 and 80 per cent," he said.

Boonruang said there was no drug treatment for methamphetamine addicts, but that "supportive" medicines were given for symptoms of withdrawal, which include loss of appetite and long periods of fatigue.

Methamphetamine addiction in Thailand has struck a younger cross-section of Thai society than the comparatively older heroin and opium addicts, who tend to be at least 30. The youngest patient at Thanyarak is just eight years old.

Nanda Krairiksh, human resources chief for the United Nations Economic and Social Council for Asia and the Pacific, said the average age of first-time users had decreased from age 17 two years ago to about 13 today.

"A lot of young people take it for recreational use," she said, noting that the relapse rate for addicts is about 70 per cent. "It cuts across social backgrounds. It's everywhere -- it's in every school, in every university."

The appeal of methamphetamines lies in its ease of use, its low cost at about 50 baht a tablet (less than a US dollar) and the misperception that it is a non-addictive "fun drug".

Experts say "crazy medicine" also complements Western-style rave parties popular among young Thais by giving the user an adrenaline-like rush of energy for all-night dancing to hypnotic techno rhythms.

"It looks like aspirin, it is extremely cheap and it is user-friendly," said Sandro Calvani, UN Drug Control Program representative in Bangkok, adding that a similar addiction crisis had hit China.

"I think it is a kind of drug that stimulates the human brain... to have better sex, to dance faster," he said. "It is highly addictive because it provokes such a pleasurable effect."

Calvani said there is a "very low stigma" attached to methamphetamine use, making it a common in social settings where the small orange pills can be easily ingested or smoked in its crystal form.

Thai narcotics authorities say Thailand's rising tide of methamphetamines has been fuelled partly by neglectful parents focused on making money, particularly during Thailand's boom years in the 1980s and 90s.

"Everybody is working hard to get money and become rich and they forget their families, their kids," said Viroj Somyai, assistant secretary general at Thailand's Office of Narcotics Control Board.

"The perception is that this is a medicine, that it's not a narcotic," he said, adding that the long-term effects of the drug were unknown. "They think it's not a drug you can become addicted to, just a fun drug."

Viroj added that methamphetamines have spread throughout Thailand thanks to "very efficient" distribution networks that start when large quantities of the drug are dropped at border villages for delivery to dealers in Bangkok.

Those dealers then funnel a good proportion of the drugs into schools through vulnerable students.

"In one school, they will try to pick three or four kids that have problems in their life -- like poverty," he said. They get their hooks into these kids and the kids become addicted."

"They offer drugs to the kids free of charge but they will have to bring them to school and sell them to schoolmates."

Methamphetamine addicts and public health officials say Thai officials are also partly to blame for the illicit trade, which draws huge profits on pills manufactured for one or two baht and sold on the street for up to 150 baht.

"The government must pay serious attention to this problem because we find that many of the sellers are from the government, such as police, soldiers and politicians," said Boonruang of Thanyarak Hospital.