Harvard Asia Pacific Review
The yaa baa
phenomenon in Mainland Southeast Asia
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
CNRS-Prodig
www.geopium.org
Dr. Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy is a geographer
and research fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific
Research (CNRS).
In 2004, he co-authored, with Joël
Meissonnier, Yaa Baa.
Production, Traffic, and Consumption of Methamphetamine in
Mainland Southeast Asia (Singapore University Press).
He produces www.geopium.org.
After the opium and heroin decades that made the so-called
Golden Triangle
world famous, the 1990s were marked by a sudden increase in
production and consumption levels of illicit synthetic drugs
in Mainland Southeast Asia. These illicit synthetic drugs
are classified as amphetamine-type stimulants, or ATS, a category
that includes amphetamine, methamphetamine and ecstasy. Since
the 1990s, synthetic products such as methamphetamine and
ecstasy have flooded illegal drug markets across Southeast
Asia and China. The most important of these synthetic drugs
in terms of quantities produced and consumed in Mainland Southeast
Asia is methamphetamine, a substance that greatly benefited
from the pre-existence of the well-functioning integrated
system of illicit opium and heroin production, distribution,
and consumption in the region.
Southeast Asian methamphetamine comes mainly
from Burma (also known as Myanmar) but it is also produced
in Laos and Cambodia. It has been produced in Thailand too,
the drug’s biggest regional consumer market, where it
is known as yaa baa, or ‘madness drug’.
Regional yaa baa consumption is concentrated in Thailand,
but it has also spread to Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia,
and China. Methamphetamine consumption developed more or less
quickly in these countries, replacing, to some extent, declining
consumption of heroin.
Yaa baa versus heroin
Methamphetamine production developed in the context of rapidly
decreasing opium and heroin productions in Mainland Southeast
Asia, both because of a market evolution and because yaa baa
benefited from clear comparative production advantages over
heroin.
Heroin is obtained by chemical transformation
of morphine, one of the many alkaloids of opium, the latex-like
produced by the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum L.
Opium poppy cultivation is illegal in Mainland Southeast Asia
and in China, and opium and heroin production, also illegal,
could only occur in the region because tens of thousands of
hectares of poppies were cultivated in Burma, Laos, Vietnam,
and Thailand. However, during the last decades, Thailand rid
itself of opium poppy cultivation, and Vietnam and Laos followed
in the early 2000s. Even in Burma, where the heart of the
Golden Triangle had settled decades ago, is opium production
undergoing a drastic reduction. However, in the mean time,
methamphetamine production has exploded in Burma.
Methamphetamine, also called ice,
crystal meth, or cranck in the United States,
shabu in Japan, or yaa baa in Thailand,
can be produced from ephedrine, an alkaloid contained in certain
Ephedra, a perennial xerophytic bush or creeper that
grows in dry tropical and temperate regions. The genus Ephedra
is thought to have originated in Northern China and Mongolia,
where Ephedra sinica S. grows on large tracts and is commonly
found in the Chinese pharmacopoeia under the name of mahuang.
The plant’s properties, related to
its ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine content, has led it to
be used in China for medicinal purposes since at least 4,800
years ago. China has large areas, in Yunnan and Fujian for
example, where Ephedra grows in the wild. Ephedra
cultivation is also particularly developed in the Yinchuan
plain in the north of Ningxia, as the plant helps to limit
the expansion of sand dunes over the country’s most
fertile land. In the last decades, China has invested in the
commercial production of this old remedy and has become the
world’s largest producer of ephedrine.
But illicit drug producers and traffickers
have also benefited from ephedrine being readily available
as they supplied their illicit methamphetamine production
facilities with the alkaloid. In the early 1990s China had
not only become the main destination for exports of Burmese
heroin but had also become a significant ATS producer. Indeed,
contrary to the official line, the country’s massive
increase in drug consumption and addiction cannot be attributed
solely to foreign production. The increase in Chinese production
of amphetamine and ecstasy during the year 2000 would thus
account for a large part of the 26 per cent increase in the
number of illicit drug consumers recorded in the country.
The origins of methamphetamine production
in China can be traced back to Japan. By the 1980s, Japanese
methamphetamine (shabu) producers were known to be
operating in South Korea. They were forced to close down,
however, with the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul and accompanying
crackdown on crime in the country. Producers then opted to
transfer their operations to Taiwan before that country, in
turn, decided in October 1990 to put methamphetamine production
and consumption on the top of the list of social problems
to be eradicated. The Japanese producers therefore moved their
activities once again, this time to the Chinese province of
Fujian. The province rapidly became a major drug production
and consumption centre.
Most likely, methamphetamine production also
started in the early 1990s in Burma as the first regional
methamphetamine laboratories were reportedly established in
the hilly Wa regions southeast of Pangshang, in Burma’s
Shan state, around 1993. However, methamphetamine production
developed quickly and considerably in Burma, partly due to
its various advantages over heroin production.
For instance, agricultural constraints are
relatively absent from methamphetamine production. Unlike
those who produce heroin, or cocaine, methamphetamine producers
do not depend on a vast area dedicated to illicit cultivation,
where the vagaries of climate and eradication campaigns may
endanger their own production. Furthermore, Ephedra,
unlike the opium poppy, is not subject to legal restrictions
of any kind: it is considered illicit only if misused. However,
the illicitness of methamphetamine did not prevent it from
being produced, trafficked and consumed in Burma, Thailand,
Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
Yaa baa: a performance-enhancing
yet harmful substance
Beyond surveying the economy and geopolitics of methamphetamine,
it is necessary to precise what kind of a substance methamphetamine
is. While no toxic substance is necessary for an ‘addict’
to exist, as any compulsive or habit-forming practice, whether
it involves sport, gambling, work, or even sex, amply illustrates,
some substances can cause physical addiction while others
only provoke psychological addiction.
To the difference of heroin, yaa baa is a
performance-enhancing drug and one that can be consumed for
recreative as well as work purposes. Heroin is very rarely
consumed for work purposes as it sedates the brain. Opioids
and opiates, such as morphine and heroin, are the only true
“narcotic” drugs since they cause dullness, induce
sleep and relieve pain: narcotics, as etymology tells us,
cause drowsiness and numbness. Hence, morphine, the principal
alkaloid of opium, is an analgesic and a sedative and has
an effect on the central nervous system, while cocaine, for
example, an alkaloid obtained from coca leaves, is a topical
anesthetic and, as a stimulant, provokes euphoric effects.
Like cocaine, amphetamines differ greatly from heroin and
other true narcotics, for they are stimulants which cause
physical and mental hyperactivity, which is why they are sometimes
called ‘wake-up amines’.
Like many substances, ATS can cause addiction
or dependence. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines
drug addiction as “a mental and sometimes also a physical
state, resulting from the interaction between a product and
an organism” that causes behavioural changes and drives
the user to take the product continuously or periodically
in order to experience its pleasurable mental effects, if
he is not already taking the drug simply to avoid the sickness
caused by deprivation. The WHO stresses that drug dependence
always includes “a compulsion to take the drug on a
continuous or periodic basis”. But such a compulsion
can be attributed to either physical or psychological addiction,
or to both. Physical addiction can be described as “an
adaptive state that manifests itself by intense physical disturbance
when the administration of drug is suspended”, while
psychological addiction can be observed when “the drug
produces a feeling of satisfaction and a psychic drive that
requires periodic or continuous administration of the drug
to produce pleasure or to avoid discomfort”.
However, methamphetamine and other psycho-stimulant
drugs rarely cause physical addiction and its resultant state
of withdrawal. Hence, weaning, which in the strict sense of
the term corresponds to the first step of the detoxification
of a person physically dependent on an addictive substance,
does not occur with ATS. On the other hand, the methamphetamine
user can rapidly develop a strong mental addiction. Tolerance,
the decreased sensitivity to the same dose of a given substance
that leads to a compensatory increase in quantities of it
consumed, is not yet clearly demonstrated in the context of
the use of psycho-stimulants.
If dependence to methamphetamine differs
greatly from addiction to heroin, methamphetamine consumption
is nevertheless extremely detrimental to human health as many
of its side-effects can be permanent and can easily prove
fatal to the substance user. Methamphetamine is thus a powerful
performance-enhancing substance that is clearly a harmful
health practice.
The wide-ranging markets of yaa baa
consumption
Higher-than-average levels of social and economic development
seem to favour ATS use by younger populations, particularly
school-age youngsters and university students. Over the last
decade, Thailand, Macao and Hong Kong have showed strong ‘recreational’
methamphetamine use patterns among these groups. In Hong Kong
as well as in urban areas of Thailand, the drug’s popularity
with young people is clearly part of a Western-influenced
nightlife culture that includes techno music and fashion,
clubbing, and illicit drug-taking. However, it now seems that
methamphetamine consumption is also rising in countries such
as Laos, where Western-influenced nightlife culture is far
less widespread than in Thailand but where yaa baa consumption
by young people has increased since 2000. Students, however,
consume methamphetamine not only for recreational purposes
such as extending dance sessions but also to increase their
work capacity, especially during exam periods.
But in the region, methamphetamine is far
from being used only by the youth. A wide-ranging consumer
market exists: from truck drivers to farmers, fishermen and
commercial sex workers, many kinds of people use or abuse
methamphetamine to increase their productive capacity, whether
physical or intellectual. Hence in Thailand, methamphetamine
can be considered as both a labour and a recreational drug.
The use patterns of methamphetamine are very
different from those of other illicit drugs, such as heroin.
Alongside its recreational use, yaa baa is in fact
partially a ‘labour’ drug consumed by individuals
everywhere from schools to fields. Alternatively, heroin,
used by more marginalised sections of society, is clearly
a drug far less ‘conducive’ to work. A study carried
out in 2000 by the Thai Farmers Research Centre on a sample
group of 728 workers in Bangkok showed that 88 per cent of
them regularly resorted to stimulants so they could work more
and longer hours. Of the latter, 20 per cent acknowledged
using methamphetamine.
The intricacies of yaa baa consumer markets
in Thailand are very complex. Yaa baa consumption
is indeed extremely diverse and wide-ranging, and the drug
in turn proves able to satisfy the expectations of many different
types of users. This has clearly to do with the peculiarity
of yaa baa itself, a substance that defies the usual
consumer profiles for illicit drugs.
In Thailand methamphetamine is not positioned
along a market segment for psychotropic products, but rather
pervades the entire consumer market. Far from conforming to
the classical model where a drug becomes associated with a
particular social category, yaa baa is as popular
with ‘street children’ as it is with privileged
youth. Unlike most drugs, yaa baa is as widely consumed
both in rural and urban areas. This is especially the case
for user patterns in some politically ‘sensitive’
parts of the countryside, where consumption levels are particularly
high. Finally, if methamphetamine is consumed today by an
overwhelming majority of young, even very young Thais –
from primary school-goers to high school and university students
– this is the result of an astonishing trend reversal.
As recently as ten years ago, yaa baa belonged to
a market comprised mostly of working adults who took it to
cope with the demands of physically or mentally taxing livelihoods.
These social trends, coalescing around a
drug whose multiple properties allow it to satisfy the varied
aspirations of Thai consumers, have served to elevate yaa
baa to the ranks of what could be called ‘virtuous substances’.
Methamphetamine’s secondary effects are rarely recognized
or admitted by its users; according to its fervent supporters,
yaa baa has all the advantages of a drug with none of its
defects. It is largely considered something harmless and enticing
despite the fact that individuals’ habitual yaa baa
use over the long term can threaten social well-being, since
those given to such practices are likely to suffer irreparable
degeneration of the nervous system and psychological damage.
Yaa baa as a national security
hreat?
The production and trafficking of ATS and other illicit drugs
also bears upon national security, if indirectly. The case
of Thailand is particularly striking in this regard. To fight
drug trafficking and related violence, the country’s
armed forces, police, and customs authorities have been mobilised
along the Thai-Burmese border on a scale unmatched since the
end of the communist threat. This effort has also seen other
formerly anti-communist groups redeployed to drug trafficking
campaigns. The fact that Thai military troops from the Laotian
and Cambodian fronts have also been diverted to the Burmese
border illustrates the perceived urgency of the situation.
However, it can be argued that the armed violence characterizing
the illicit drug trades proceeds as much from its illicit
nature and the conflict-ridden contexts in which it thrives,
as it does from the militarization of anti-drug operations
and policies.
Given all this, the very causes and effects
of the entire spectrum of methamphetamine production, trafficking,
and consumption need to be dealt with. Although methamphetamine
production in Burma can be said to spur consumption in Thailand,
it is also true that Thailand is the country whose thriving
market for drugs stimulates methamphetamine production in
Burma and other areas of Mainland Southeast Asia. To understand
the specific mechanisms of the illicit drug market, one has
to provide a clearer picture of the push and pull factors
that are so characteristic of an illegal economy. Thus, yaa
baa production, trafficking and consumption must be understood
in regional terms, without dissociating production from consumption.
A geographical and geopolitical approach to the phenomenon
is therefore desirable, as these perspectives illuminate production
and trafficking patterns. Of course, bilateral relations between
Burma and Thailand also call for such a geopolitical approach:
the consumption boom in Thailand is only the alter ego of
the explosive rise in production in Burma, and vice versa.
Thai authorities have widely denounced what
they termed the “methamphetamine threat” after
they estimated that 600 million pills had been produced in
Burma in 2000, and 800 million in 2002. Therefor, at the beginning
of 2003, Thailand’s Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra,
launched his highly controversial “war on drugs”.
During three-month, the Thai authorities
seized forty million methamphetamine tablets and imprisoned
92,500 drug users, 43,000 dealers, and 750 drug producers
and traffickers, or at least alleged drug uses, dealers, and
drug producers and traffickers. Some 1,300 civil servants
were sacked or placed in custody for their complicity in the
illegal drug trade. These dramatic results of Thailand’s
war on drugs have come at a very high social price, baffling
basic justice and human rights. At least 2,500 people were
killed during the anti-drug campaign, mostly by gunfire, many
of them no more than ordinary users and some others by mistake
or by revenge for other reasons. “Extra-judicial killings”
have been widely denounced and condemned by human rights activists
in Thailand and abroad. Nevertheless, the government claimed
the operation to have been a “victory beyond expectation”,
although such war on drugs were later repeated but with much
less violence and publicity. In 2005, methamphetamine is still
widely produced in Burma and in the rest of Mainland Southeast
Asia, where consumption is still developing.
The methamphetamine industry has clearly
benefited from a marketing system whose working mechanisms
were already in place. In fact, major players in heroin trafficking
could easily reposition themselves in this new methamphetamine
market, using people and methods that were already tried and
tested. Notably, the jump in demand for yaa baa corresponded
to the 1996 sudden increase in the price of heroin. Methamphetamine’s
technically easier and cheaper production techniques, compared
to those of heroin, assured correspondingly larger profit
margins.
In the context of the Asian crisis, the financial
gains to be made at all stages of drug trafficking have been
particularly high. The rise of the yaa baa market has been
a very timely one and a very lucrative one as methamphetamine
consumption is not confined to a few socio-economical niches.
It transcends the divisions of Thai society, so much so that
one can reasonably conclude the yaa baa economy has, at least
for the time being, outstripped that of heroin in Thailand.
And the same is now happening in Laos, where the suppression
of opium production has deeply impacted on opium availability
and prices.
