Merciless methamphetamine networks become ill-prepared in Myanmar

KUTKAI – In northeastern Myanmar, worshipers attending a church were manning merchants and drug addicts with the desperate aim of saving their communities from the health crisis caused by methamphetamine.

But anonymous death threats put an end to militia operations.

"This has just become too dangerous for us," said Zau Man, head of the local Baptist Church in Kutkai, a town in Shan's state marked by addiction.

Myanmar is the second largest opium producer in the world after Afghanistan and would now be the main source of methamphetamine.

The multibillion-dollar industry outstrips its rivals in Latin America to fuel lucrative markets as far-flung as Sydney, Tokyo and Seoul.

Shan is the epicenter of production in Myanmar, with a network of local armed groups in connection with gangs of transnational traffickers.

Kutkai lies between Mandalay and Muse, a militia town on the border with China, a key entry point for precursors heading to Myanmar's illegal methamphetamine labs.

Trucks carrying illicit goods crisscross the city in both directions, in front of a Chinese temple and street-side restaurants with Mandarin signs.

Heroin and methamphetamine here are commonplace. Zau Man says that almost all households have at least one drug addict, dealers are working in the open and many violent drug addicts have turned parts of Kutkai into prohibited areas.

"In some areas you can only get food for up to 22 hours, but you can get medicine 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," he says.

SMART AND RUTHLESS

Myanmar is facing a "public health disaster" because of methamphetamine and few villages are unscathed, said Jeremy Douglas, regional representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, at the 39; AFP.

But the crisis is particularly severe in the poppy-covered hills of Shan State, where a landscape invaded by armed rebel groups, militias, and security forces is an ideal breeding ground for methamphetamine laboratories.

No precise figures are available on the production of high quality crystalline methamphetamine, or "ice", and low quality methamphetamine, known in Southeast Asia as "yaba".

In January 2018, Kutkai police seized 30 million yaba tablets, 1,750 kilograms of crystal meth and 500 kilograms of heroin, with a national value of some $ 54 million, in the most big drug traffic of the country.

However, according to the International Crisis Group, the International Crisis Group says its company "denies" Shan 's formal economy, but leaves huge raids on unchanged selling prices, suggesting that it is only a small slice of production.

Crystal methamphetamine is smuggled through sophisticated traffic networks to more developed markets such as Australia, where it can reach a wholesale value of more than $ 180 million per tonne.

Yaba is distributed to Myanmar's neighbors, including Thailand and Bangladesh.

But pink pills are increasingly being used at unaffordable prices in a domestic market as part of what Douglas calls a "smart and ruthless" strategy to increase demand.

"It's a dirty deal and they're really imposing on the people," he says.

Users and health workers from three different cities in the state of Shan – Lashio, Kutkai and Muse – told AFP that the pills cost only 500 kyat for three, or about 10 cents each .

As the price falls, the user is also aging, with nine-year-olds taking yaba already reported.

Many miners, long-distance drivers and shiftworkers combine narcotics – smoking methamphetamine to keep them awake and injecting heroin to reduce them.

Ashamed to go home

Arr San, a skinny 27-year-old man with tangled hair, digs around his roadside shack at Muse and pulls out a bang made from a plastic bottle that he uses to smoke the yaba .

He has been addicted since the age of 18 and currently consumes about five tablets a day.

For Arr San, like many others in the region, there are few opportunities to avoid the cycle of poverty and violence. Two years ago, he fled to his home in a nearby city for fear of being forced to join an armed ethnic group.

Narcotics can help to get out of the sad reality of life in the Shan.

"I'm taking drugs because I'm depressed and it helps to stabilize my mind," he says.

Arr San is one of 300 people who commute daily to the local hospital for methadone, a powerful opioid used to wean people with heroin.

But the problem is not limited to the poor.

Among the urban elite of Myanmar, the dependence on high quality crystal meth is already taking root.

Usually in the form of powder or crystal, "ice" is usually snorted or smoked. It can also be injected, which increases the risk of transmission of the disease through the sharing of syringes.

A UNODC-supported policy, launched in February 2018, advocates the decriminalization of users and the treatment of drugs as a health problem, while addressing the pillars of this trade.

But the law has not yet caught up. Anyone who is taken with a single pill of yaba still has at least five years in prison.

It is estimated that almost half of the detainees in Myanmar are incarcerated for minor drug offenses and arrests of drug users are increasing.

The lack of funding for prevention work and treatment means that the problem of methamphetamine in Myanmar can only get worse.

Arr says, "I want to go home and see my mother's face, but I can not."

He added, "I do not want to disturb her because I'm so sick."