Thai police seize a file haul of fifty million methamphetamine tablets close to border with Myanmar
BANGKOK — Thai police have seized what’s being referred to as a file haul of methamphetamine tablets within the western province of Kanchanaburi, near the Myanmar border.
Officers discovered an estimated 50 million tablets hidden in sacks in a six-wheeler truck they stopped at a joint police-military checkpoint on Tuesday. The occupants of the truck – a person and a girl – had been arrested.
The amount of methamphetamine tablets seized is a file for Thailand, Jeremy Douglas, the Southeast Asia regional consultant for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, stated Wednesday. The area’s greatest recognized seizure befell in neighboring Laos in October 2021, when a consignment of 55 million capsules was found.
“We’ve not seen major cases here in Kanchanaburi for a couple of years, and never anything like this,” Douglas stated. “But it’s also not a surprise given the extreme supply being produced by militias and traffickers in northern Myanmar.”
Myanmar has traditionally been the area’s fundamental drug manufacturing space partially due to lax safety measures in border areas the place minority ethnic teams have lengthy been preventing for better autonomy. Some of the highly effective ethnic armed teams there have been closely concerned in narcotics manufacturing for many years.
A 2021 navy takeover in Myanmar that unseated the elected authorities of Aung San Suu Kyi triggered armed resistance nationwide, additional destabilizing the nation.
The U.N. drug company’s June 2023 report on artificial medicine in East and Southeast Asia warned that the massive commerce in methamphetamine and different unlawful medicine exhibits no indicators of slowing down.
Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, who can be inside minister, advised reporters that unlawful medicine was smuggled into Thailand’s northern and northeastern provinces, however had moved to western provinces corresponding to Kanchanaburi due to extra intense surveillance and safety alongside the outdated routes, a degree the U.N. company had additionally made earlier this 12 months.
Anutin stated elevated fight between Myanmar’s navy and its foes among the many nation’s pro-democracy motion and ethnic minority armed teams additionally elevated the smugglers’ dangers alongside their outdated routes.
