Myanmar’s meth boom is fuelled by cold pills from India
Five years ago, when cold pills first trickled across Myanmar’s untamed border with India, many local officials were baffled. Where was this medicine going, and why were smugglers so interested in it?
Today, the cross-border trickle has become a torrent and everyone knows why the Indian-made pills are so valuable: they are bound for secret laboratories in lawless eastern Myanmar that churn out most of mainland Southeast Asia’s methamphetamine, or “meth”.
Cold pills contain pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient of meth, a highly addictive drug whose ever-soaring popularity is rattling governments across Asia.
In recent months, the Philippines has elected a president on a platform of harsh action against drug dealers, Indonesia has resumed executions of drug traffickers after a year-long hiatus and Thailand is wrestling with a soaring prison population.
Myanmar’s current boom in meth production would be impossible without a recent surge in pseudoephedrine smuggled from India’s huge and illregulated pharmaceuticals sector, say police and narcotics experts.
The uninterrupted flow of the drug is highlighting a disconnect between countries in tackling a meth epidemic that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) calls Asia’s “number one drug threat”.
“It’s big, big business,” said Ye Htut, a former advisor to Myan- mar’s ex-President Thein Sein. He attributed a property boom in Kalay, the largest town in this otherwise impoverished region, to the profits made from smuggling pseudoephedrine.
Meth is sold in pill form as “ya ba”, a Thai name meaning “crazy medicine”, or as a more potent, crystalline substance known as “crystal meth”, “ice” or “shabu”.
Each Indian cold pill can make one “ya ba” and costs only a few cents to produce.
By the time it has crossed the border and reached Mandalay Myanmar’s northern capital and a major smuggling hub - the pill’s value has increased roughly tenfold.
Across mainland Southeast Asia, the UNODC estimates the meth trade was worth about $15 billion in 2013.
The rugged and ethnically diverse region ranks among Myanmar’s poorest, with no industry and modest infrastructure.