CHIANG RAI: A new drug-production gang may be emerging in the country's northern border, following the seizure of 1.7 million methamphetamine or ya ba pills, authorities say.
The packages containing the pills bore an eagle logo, which law enforcement officials have not seen before, said Col Chatree Sa-nguantham of the Pha Muang task force.
Three young men were arrested in a crackdown carried out by the task force in Muang district of Chiang Rai on Friday night. The task force was deployed to the Nong Bua reservoir in tambon Bandu around 10.30pm on Friday following a tip-off that illicit drugs were going to be smuggled from the border area in Mae Sai district to an area near the reservoir.
The soldiers later spotted a white Toyota Innova with Bangkok licence plates parked near the reservoir, with three men standing nearby. The soldiers asked to search the vehicle and found 13 sacks stuffed with methamphetamine pills. The men were immediately arrested, Col Chatree said yesterday. The suspects were identified as Apirak Homros, 26, of Chai Nat's Sankhaburi district; Takeshi Shinoda, 23, of Chiang Mai's Mae Taeng district; and Sarawut Jariyakitwanchai, 26, of Chiang Rai's Wiang Chai district. The trio were handed over to Bandu police for prosecution. Col Chatree added that Shinoda was part-Japanese.
Wa State in Myanmar has long been known as a key methamphetamine producing area in Southeast Asia, and is fast growing into a drug-manufacturing hub supplying to markets beyond the region. Over-production has worsened the regional drug epidemic as a pill of ya ba costs as little as 40 baht in Bangkok. That's far lower than the 200 to 300 baht a pill a few years ago and is about the same price as when former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched his bloody war on drugs in 2003.
The number of methamphetamine tablets seized in 2018 in the country -- 515 million -- far exceeded the combined seizures reported from other countries in the region in any given year, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said.