The new war on drugs promised by the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) has got under way. It looks a lot like the old war on drugs. Police held briefings and staged photo opportunities for the media after weekend operations in Rayong and Surin provinces. They identified 14 men and women arrested, and showed several thousand speed tablets and packets of ya ice, or crystal meth. It was not a particularly impressive reboot of a renewed campaign to suppress illicit drugs.
Police in Rayong arrested two men and a woman, and charged them with dealing ya ba tablets. They seized 6,000 speed tablets in the two-part operation, spread over two days and involving three separate searches. The only interesting part of the operation is that one of those arrested said their operations were directed, and their drugs supplied by an imprisoned drug dealer in the provincial lockup.
The Surin operation was equally depressing. A task force of police, local officials and soldiers under the command of the NCPO raided several homes and arrested suspected street-corner ya ba sellers. In all, 11 men are in lockup awaiting trial, and the task force took exactly 3,602 speed tablets off the streets.
These are useful operations, eliminating minor drug sellers and taking illicit drugs off the market. But it is hardly the campaign promised by the NCPO. In one of its earliest decisions on national policy, the military council’s Order No.41 envisioned a more imaginative and comprehensive policy to fight both drug peddling and abuse. It directed authorities to crack down on dealers and big-time traffickers, but it emphasised a compassionate policy toward drug abusers to fight the problem from the users’ end of the drug-dealing supply chain.
For the start of Buddhist Lent, coup leader Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha issued a short appeal on one of the most dangerous of drugs. "Stop being slaves of alcohol," he said, offering part of a slogan for the sacred Buddhist day. The junta designated the first day of Lent as an official "national no-alcohol day", lending official emphasis to a holiday where sales and consumption of alcohol were banned by law anyway.
The battle against drug abuse has no chance of succeeding so long as authorities emphasise operations such as those it trumpeted from Rayong and Surin. Arresting minor drug dealers and seizing relatively small caches of ya ba are necessary. But they are the least important and least impressive.
On the suppression side, authorities have spent too much time chasing minor dealers. It is time to read Order 41 again, and note the NCPO’s instruction to pursue traffickers. Exercising control over the drug-dealing inmate in the Rayong provincial prison would achieve much more than operations such as the ones the police highlighted.
At the national level, it is past time to get serious about pursing the so-called “Mister Bigs” of trafficking. The NCPO is in a brilliant position to help. Its close relations with the Myanmar military can be used to start getting at the region’s biggest drug dealers.
At the local level, providing education and help to drug abusers will also bring more progress than mere pursuit of street-corner dealers. Rehabilitation and help in getting jobs will lessen demand for drugs. Help for workers caught up in drug abuse must be on offer, and given without legal action against them. A complete approach to the problem of illicit drugs is the only way to reduce demand and dependence.