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Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
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YAA BAA
Production, Traffic and Consumption of
Methamphetamine in Mainland Southeast Asia
***
CONTENTS
***
Preface by Stéphane Dovert ix
Introduction xvii
PART ONE Yaa Baa, An Illicit Drug from the Golden
Triangle: A Geo-Historical and Geopolitical Study of Its Production and
Traffic
by Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
1. Methamphetamine 3
2. History of a Product and Its Production Techniques 7
3. The Historical and Geographic Context of the Golden Triangle 12
4. Methamphetamine Production and Traffic in Mainland Southeast Asia 23
PART TWO The Circuits of Yaa Baa: Methamphetamine
Circulation and Use in Thailand
by Joël Meissonnier
5. From the Producer to the Consumer 53
6. Methamphetamine Use Among Workers and Low-income Groups 65
7. Yaa Baa’s Prime Target — The Youth 81
PART THREE Sociological Context of the Explosion
in Methamphetamine Use in Thailand
by Joël Meissonnier
8. A Difficult Legacy for the Younger Generations 107
9. Youth, Drugs, and Thailand’s Institutional Culture 120
10. Types of Methamphetamine Users: An Attempt to Define Models 143
Conclusion 160
Notes 166
Glossary 193
Bibliography 195
Index 204
MAPS
Principal Sites of Opium and Methamphetamine Production in Mainland Southeast
Asia xv
Principal Northern Drug Trafficking Routes of Mainland
Southeast Asia 36
Principal Southern Drug Trafficking Routes of Mainland
Southeast Asia 40
CHARTS
Comparative Profiles of Burma and Thailand xvi
The Chain of Intermediaries in Methamphetamine Trafficking
56
Four Ideal Types of Methamphetamine Consumers 144
Three Principal Categories of Methamphetamine Consumers
145
Passage of Users from One Status to Another 149
Ability to Exit from the Yaa Baa Circuit 15
Geopium's Related Articles as of July 2004
Opium ban risks greater insecurity for Wa in Myanmar
Jane's
Intelligence Review, Vol. 16 N°
2, February 2004, pp. 39-41, 1 map.
Myanmar's Wa: Likely Losers in the Opium War
www.atimes.com,
Hong Kong, January 24, 2004.
New drug trafficking routes in Southeast Asia
Jane's
Intelligence Review, Vol. 14 N°
7, July 2002, pp. 32-34, 2 maps.
Drugs and war destabilize Thai-Myanmar border region
Jane's
Intelligence Review, Vol. 14 N°
4, April 2002, pp. 33-35, 2 maps.
|
YAA BAA
Production, Traffic
and Consumption of Methamphetamine in Mainland Southeast Asia
By Pierre-Arnaud
Chouvy & Joël
Meissonnier
210 pages, 3 maps.
***
Preface by Stéphane
Dovert
Introduction
by Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
& Joël
Meissonnier
(Edited in
English by Dr. Kay Mohlman)
Singapore
University Press - IRASEC
ISBN 9971692783
Preview this book:
Yaa Baa was reviewed in The
Straits Times (Singapore) on Dec 23, 2004:
The ecstasy that is Asia's agony, by Anthony
Paul, Senior Writer.
"A riveting new book - Yaa
Baa: Production, Traffic And Consumption Of Methamphetamine In Mainland
South-east Asia (Singapore University Press, 2004) - reminds us
that much of the world's manufacturing of these drugs (which law-enforcement
officials refer to as amphetamine-type stimulants or ATS) occurs in
East and South Asia.
The book (which is not as stuffily academic
as its title might imply) is a translation/update of a work first published
in 2002 by the French scientific institution, Institut de Recherche
sur l'Asie du Sud-est Contemporaine. Geographer Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
and sociologist Joel Meissonier conducted the study at the institute's
request.
They tell a disturbing tale. At a time
when East Asia has begun chalking up some examples of successful suppression
of the heroin manufacture and trafficking, a new threat to our youth
has appeared.
One Thailand statistic crystallises
the menace of what the Thais call yaa baa, their term for ecstasy pills:
'At Bangkok's Thanyarak Hospital, a specialised treatment centre for
addiction,' the authors report, 'the proportion of heroin addicts had
decreased from 78 to 15 per cent of the total institutional population
between 1996 and 2000, whereas that of yaa baa users had risen from
12 to 74 per cent for the same period.'
There is a disturbing continuum about
the business: ATS factories are often set up in the same places as heroin
laboratories (most notably in Myanmar, Laos, Thailand). Some of the
names linked to heroin in the past turn up in today's ATS reports."
Orders can
be made directly through Singapore
University Press,
tel.: +65 6776-1148
fax.: +65 6774-0652
email: supbooks@nus.edu.sg
---
From US, orders
can be made through University
of Hawaii Press,
Tel: 1-808-956-8255 - Fax:
1-808-988-6052.
e-mail: uhpbooks@hawaii.edu
Order
now
---
Of course, orders
can also be made through online bookstores such as Amazon.com:
***
Preface by Stéphane
Dovert
Introduction by Pierre-Arnaud
Chouvy & Joël
Meissonnier
Just
say no is not an option. Just say “know” is.
Antonio
Escohotado, A Brief History of Drugs, 1999.
In 2000, the Bangkok-based
French scientific institution IRASEC (Institut de recherche sur
l’Asie du Sud-Est contemporaine – Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia) asked
geographer Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy and sociologist Joël Meissonnier to conduct research on the drug yaa baa, Thailand’s
most popular amphetamine-type stimulant (ATS). Their common research resulted in a publication two years later
entitled Yaa Baa: Production, trafic et consommation de méthamphétamine
en Asie du Sud-Est continentale. [1]
At the time of research,
both yaa baa consumption rates and the number of users had
increased so dramatically in Thailand that a sizeable share of the kingdom’s youth could be said
to have been touched by the ATS drug in some way or another. Consumed
by those who used it for work as well as for recreation, yaa baa
became prominent and highly desirable. Students pressured to succeed
academically, fishermen forced by their occupations to spend long
nights on deck, teenagers trying to free themselves from the constraints
of a strict social framework, and yuppies searching for meaning to
their lives--all had begun to enlist the help of this cheap, colourful
pill. Some did not even consider yaa baa to be a drug because
its side effects were not perceived as harmful. And despite the tendency
of wealthy Thais to avoid the consumption patterns and tastes of the
poorer classes, this “nearly perfect product” appealed to all
levels of Thai society.
Yaa baa in Thai society did not appear out of thin air. In neighbouring Burma, methamphetamine pills
came to rival both opium and heroin as the most profitable product
in the narcotics trafficking business. The mountainous, minority-controlled
border regions between Thailand and Burma have played a significant
role in the recent emergence of the ATS trade. Long-established routes
running through the Golden Triangle, which for centuries had been
a dynamic hub for various kinds of commerce, now served the new opportunities
brought forth by the pill trade.
Downstream, numerous wholesalers with military
and political links on both sides of the border supplied methamphetamine
tablets to a multitude of retailers and dealers. Traffickers concealed
their illegal cargo in truck petrol tanks, car chassis, and even inside
their underwear. Customs posts were overwhelmed by the flood of pills,
and officials were often encouraged to turn a blind eye to the passing
traffic.
But at the beginning of 2003, a political
earthquake erupted in Thailand, leaving in its wake a
new approach to solving what had become an acute, widespread drug
problem: the “war against drugs” launched by the Thai Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra. During this three-month war, authorities seized
forty million methamphetamine tablets and jailed 92,500 drug addicts,
43,000 dealers, and 750 drug producers and importers. Leading drug
traffickers arrested included Surasakdi Chantradraprasart, who controlled
a large share of the Bangkok market. Some 1,300 civil servants were
sacked or placed in custody for their complicity in the illegal drug
trade.
These dramatic outcomes
of Thailand’s war against drugs have
come at a very high social price. At least 2,500 people were killed
during the anti-drug campaign, some of them no more than ordinary
users. Children were also among the casualties. Nevertheless, the
government claimed the operation to have been a “victory beyond expectation.”
Thailand’s drug war “success” seems
to have been sustained by another war against drugs--one ostensibly
declared on the other side of the border--by the Burmese military
regime. Under pressure
from the international community, the Burmese junta appears to have
targeted the source of its drug supply more directly than its neighbour.
Burma’s campaign to eradicate
poppy cultivation has come under scrutiny from the United States, the United Nations Fund for Drug
Abuse Control (UNFDAC), and the United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime (UNODC). Even
China is now putting increasing pressure on its Burmese ally in this
regard.
Burmese authorities involved in countering
the illicit drug trade have constantly displayed good intentions over
the last few years. The “National Plan Against the Drug Menace” was
launched by Burma’s Prime Minister General
Than Shwe on October 7, 1998. The campaign received a boost in
support from Than Shwe’s successor, the seemingly more decisive General
Khin Nyunt. In 1996 a joint US-Burma opium yield survey reported an
estimated 163,000 hectares of poppy cultivation and a production total
of 2,500 tons of opium. By 2003, just seven years later, these figures
had dropped sharply to 60,000 hectares of opium poppy cultivation,
with a potential production yield of approximately 800 tons. In 2004
it is expected that opium will completely disappear from Burmese fields
before the end of the decade. Even the United Wa State Army, which,
according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),
had allegedly assumed control over approximately one third of this
lucrative industry, now seems ready to abandon opium in favour of
substitute crops.
But the 2005 deadline for eradicating poppy
cultivation in the Wa region seems wildly optimistic, even if Pau
Yu Chang, Chairman of the United Wa State Army and the most powerful
Wa leader, has proposed “to have his head chopped off if his promise
is not fulfilled in time.” The crop substitution programs have not
yet yielded positive results for the Wa, and this mountain-dwelling
population is still desperately lacking in alternatives to opium cultivation.
An estimated 300,000 people belonging mostly to ethnic minorities,
some of whom live in de facto independence from Rangoon’s authority, remain engaged
in poppy cultivation in Burma. Though the eradication
process may be harsh, the worthiness of its goal is beyond question.
The Burmese government seems less amenable
to dealing with this problem. During a seminar held in Rangoon on January 27,
2004 organised by the Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies,
police Colonel Hkam Awng, the Joint Secretary of the Central Committee
for Drug Abuse Control, emphasised the inability of his government
to cope with the ATS phenomenon without additional support. Because necessary
precursor chemicals such as acetic anhydride and ephedrine are not
produced in Burma, responsibility must also
lie with India, China and Thailand, where these chemicals
are manufactured.
Colonel Hkam Awng’s stance in effect confirmed
the extent of the ATS problem. The output of methamphetamine by producers
of the United Wa State Army is alleged to have increased dramatically,
and is supposed to have made up for financial losses caused by the
sharp decline in opium production. New transport routes, mainly at
points further south of the Golden Triangle, have already been established
to export Burmese-produced ATS. But how can this be, if the region’s
primary drug market was supposedly eliminated by the Thai government’s
recent anti-drug campaign?
The “war against drugs” has had far-reaching
consequences for Thai society, sometimes of unexpected proportions.
Hundreds of extra-judicial executions badly affected Thailand’s image in the international
arena, and the government’s reputation regarding human rights has
been seriously called into question. The ends may justify the means,
but drug eradication operations do not always appear to have been
carried out for the sake of justice. In many cases, victims’ links
to drug trafficking were not sufficiently demonstrated, and it appears
that such actions were taken as the result of false denunciations
or the settling of old scores.
As a result of the campaign a significant
number of families lost their only potential breadwinner, either because
the targeted family member was killed or put in jail. Thus, many households
are now without an income. Some users, still coping with addiction,
now find it harder to obtain their precious pills. Plans to rehabilitate
drug users also appear tenuous when confronted with the scope of the
drug problem. These developments have left many people worse off than
ever and the distress is felt not only in Bangkok, but across the
whole country.
In the field
of illicit drug studies, some believe that a “war against drugs” simply
generates more demand. This rather simplistic view has prompted certain
institutions to focus their efforts on producers and on the eradication
of what they see as a significant threat to society. But even if one
considers such a paradigm valid, it should not be forgotten that methamphetamine
presents its own set of challenges to those who seek to eliminate
it. While poppy fields can be easily located using satellite images
complemented by ground surveillance, and heroin production requires
heavy and costly equipment that is neither easily nor discreetly assembled,
ATS manufacturing is much more complicated to detect. Creating an
ATS production unit is inexpensive to undertake and easy to assemble.
Some producers even establish their own ‘factories’ at home. Furthermore,
it is simpler still to produce ATS in the Golden Triangle region,
where national laws are not strictly enforced. Hence if political
solutions and government responses to the methamphetamine boom are
sought via a focus on production alone, the problem is likely to remain
unsolved.
Why do people use illicit drugs? The question
is not a new one. Recently the market price of a yaa baa tablet
in Thailand increased dramatically,
from around 100 baht (2 euros) at the end of 2002, to approximately
400 baht in 2003. The government’s terror campaign has shaken many
ATS suppliers and consumers. Dealers are definitely more cautious,
and the price hike may have discouraged those consumers who are less
well-off. As violent as the campaign was in Thailand, every war must come to
an end, and in the wake of this drug war the Thai government has claimed
victory. However, the conditions that previously drove a substantial
part of the Thai population to use methamphetamine have not disappeared,
just because the drug war has ostensibly ended in victory.
The
1997 financial crisis placed a great deal of social
and economic strain on the poorest sectors of Thai society, and the
country’s unemployment rate remains high. It is still relatively difficult
for individuals lacking training or credentials to find and keep a
job. For those people who are employed, and who hold jobs that are
physically or mentally demanding, an artificial stimulant can still
be welcome. The country’s younger generations are under pressure at
school as the exam system is still very selective; they, too, may
thrive on the mental boost provided by substances that enhance mental
concentration and endurance.
Thai society has also experienced tremendous
social changes over the past 25 years. Many people have migrated from
the countryside to seek jobs in urban areas, and the traditional family
structure has changed accordingly. Extended family members that once
took care of the younger children are now often geographically separated,
and the nuclear family has become the norm in Thailand’s larger cities. Employed
mothers and fathers who are subject to work pressures sometimes face
difficulty in carrying out their parental roles at home. Left unsupervised
and unattended, children must find their own ways to deal with a lack
of structure, guidance, and even emotional support; under these circumstances
they may still look for easy remedies to assuage their sense of loneliness
or neglect.
Schools were recently identified
as one of the primary institutional locations for yaa baa trafficking
and consumption, and many teachers and administrators are now struggling
to find ways to navigate their pupils safely through this new passage.
However, teaching is a very formal affair in the Thai system. Educational
methods are at times rigid, based as they are on the need for absolute
respect by pupils for their professors. Dialogue is the exception
rather than the rule. Thus, teenagers may be inclined to find their
own coping mechanisms. Peer groups build their own models of discourse
and behaviour, inventing new reference points or becoming implicated
in volatile situations that may degenerate into violent brawls for
the most trivial of reasons.
Additionally, there appears to be a lack
of concrete shared goals among the younger generation of Thais. “Decline
of politicisation, growth of derision”, writes Joël Meissonnier, in reference to a common
sensibility he observes among Thai young people. And drug use is unquestionably
part of their “soft rebellious” stance.
Interviewed by the Bangkok Post in
December 2003, Chartichai Suthiklom, the Deputy Secretary-General
of the Thai Office of Narcotics Control Board, estimated that as many
as two million people in Thailand have been involved in drug-related
activities, either as addicts, consumers, traders, retailers, pusher,
producers, financiers, support staff, chemical traders,
or carriers. Most have now been re-integrated into society after rehabilitation
treatment or prison terms. It is too early to measure the consequences
of the entire campaign. But many people have lost their jobs, their
social positions, and the validation of society. It is not difficult
to imagine part of this population returning to re-established drug
networks, even if their involvement is not exclusively based on ATS.
Indeed, the 14,000 factories and 15,000
schools proclaimed “free of drugs” by Thai officials in December 2003
could well be the trees that hide the forest. Drug trafficking and
illegal drug consumption have undoubtedly been tightly reined in for
the time being. However, they most probably have not been driven away
for good.
While Thailand’s “war against drugs” was
the opening battle, it is unlikely to be the final one in national
efforts to eradicate drug use. And this book, written before the violent
and tragic climax of the operation, seeks to explain why. Although the authors’ publication predates the war on drugs
waged by the Thai Prime Minister, it can still provide readers with
fundamental keys to understanding the historical, geographic, political and
sociological settings of the yaa baa phenomenon. Such a book
thus provides a better understanding to the current situation
regarding illicit drugs in general, and ATS in particular, for both
Burma and Thailand.
Bangkok, February 5, 2004
The 1990s saw an explosive
increase in consumption levels of illicit synthetic drugs
in Southeast Asia. This increase largely consisted of drugs classified as amphetamine-type
stimulants, or ATS, a category that includes methamphetamine. Since
then, synthetic products such as methamphetamine and ecstasy have
flooded illegal drug markets across East and Southeast Asia. The present study focuses on methamphetamine--the most important of these
synthetic drugs in terms of quantities produced and consumed--to
account for the rise and functioning of an integrated system
of illicit drug production, distribution, and consumption in mainland
Southeast Asia.
Southeast Asian methamphetamine
comes mainly from Burma. It has also been produced
in Thailand, the latter of which accounts
for most of the drug’s regional consumer market. In Thailand methamphetamine is known
as yaa baa, or ‘madness drug’; its original name yaa
maa (‘horse medicine’) being the name of a local pharmaceutical
company. In 1996 Sanoh Thienthong, Health Minister at the time in
the cabinet of General Chavalit Yongchaiyudth, substituted the name
yaa baa [2] for yaa maa in an attempt
to change the image of a product whose consumption levels had already
reached alarming proportions.
Regional yaa baa use
is concentrated in Thailand, but it has also spread
to Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and China. Higher-than-average levels
of social and economic development seem to favour ATS use by younger
populations, particularly school-age youngsters and university students.
Macao and Hong Kong show strong ‘recreational’ yaa
baa use patterns among these groups. In Hong Kong and urban areas of Thailand, the drug’s popularity
with young people is part of a Western-influenced nightlife culture
that includes techno music and fashion, clubbing, and illicit drug-taking.
Additionally, ATS use is
also common among other kinds of people in the region ranging from
truck drivers to farmers, illegal immigrants who may or may not
be engaged in prostitution, and political refugees from Burma. Some workers turn to yaa
baa to increase their productive capacity, whether physical
or intellectual. Hence in Thailand, ATS can be considered
as both a labour and a recreational drug. This dual status thus
distinguishes it from heroin, also an illicit drug that was formerly
popular, but one that was eventually dethroned in the mid-1990s
by methamphetamine, the new ‘drug of choice’. Methamphetamine production
began to take off in Burma, mainly in areas controlled
by the Wa ethnic minority of the United Wa State Army
(UWSA), but also in other areas held by various insurgent groups.
As this happened there was a corresponding rapid increase in yaa
baa traffic and consumption in Thailand—so much so that by the
late 1990s, Thai authorities estimated that production levels in
Burma would exceed 600 million
pills in the year 2000, and reach 800 million by 2002. [3]
The consequences of the methamphetamine
economy for societies and economies in mainland Southeast Asia are wide-ranging. 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. Widespread abuse of the drug by working-age young people
also raises the spectre of declining economic productivity, particularly
in urban regions where it is surprisingly common to find young people
using the drug to excess.
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, as will be shown
later, 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.
Before surveying the economy
and geopolitics of illicit substances more closely, it is necessary
to clarify the very concept of a ‘drug’. On the face of it, a drug
can be defined according to the chemical substances that make up
its composition. But legal definitions also come into play: chemical
substances deemed as dangerous and lacking in recognized medicinal
value typically fall under the purview of international legislation
on narcotics. However, apart from the nature of the bio-dynamic
effects it may induce, a drug is essentially defined by the relationship
the user has with it, to quote the words of the pharmacognosy specialist
J-M. Pelt. [4] Hence, it is necessary for a
given chemical substance to be consumed in a specific way in order
for it to correspond to what we understand by the term ‘drug’. The
method and frequency of substance use, which varies according to
the individual, serve to define the parameters of drug addiction.
It is therefore the consumer
who, through usage, determines which substance is or is not a drug,
according to the particular individual concerned. In reality, for
an ‘addict’ to exist, a toxic substance—and by implication, a chemical
addiction—is not necessary. Any compulsive or habit-forming practice,
whether it involves sport, gambling, work, or even sex, amply illustrates
this possibility. [5]
Thus, although some such activities may cause the body
to release active substances such as adrenaline or endorphins, this
result in itself should not be considered the intrinsic cause of
the addiction. [6]
Thus, to devise efficient
counter-addictive practices, research should focus more on the effects
and methods of consuming illicit drugs than on the products themselves.
Seen from a similar theoretical perspective, one may doubt the efficiency
of drug eradication campaigns upon which ‘anti-drug policies’ are
based since, in the long run, such policies serve to maintain rather
than limit drug trafficking patterns and dynamics.
Given all this, the present study investigates the causes and effects of the
entire spectrum of methamphetamine production, trafficking, and
consumption. 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 ATS 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, the study of yaa baa production,
trafficking and consumption must be done 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.
However, the intricacies of yaa baa consumer markets in Thailand are
no less complex than the regional geopolitics of methamphetamine
production and trafficking. 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 narcotics, 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;
according to its fervent supporters, yaa baa has all the
advantages of a drug with none of its defects. It is considered
something harmless and enticing.
Various interrelated social
patterns are often cited to explain the explosive growth in methamphetamine
consumption in Thailand. The present study highlights two social
distinctions that characterize the population of Thai methamphetamine
users. One such divide, between young users and adults, emerges
out of a host of divergent drug-taking practices and images of the
product. The second division distinguishes ordinary yaa baa
consumers from the well-to-do, revealing motivations for taking
the drug that differ greatly between the two populations.
In Part One of the book,
geographer Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy begins with a brief primer on the chemical and physiological
effects of the synthetic substance that forms the basis of this
study, namely, methamphetamine, which belongs to a wider drug classification
of amphetamine-type stimulants, or ATS. Following this is an account
of the historical and geopolitical conditions that first gave rise
to methamphetamine production and consumption in mainland Southeast
Asia, and that subsequently allowed it to flourish. To better understand
the evolution of illicit drug production in Burma (Myanmar), the
country’s recent history and protracted armed conflicts are likewise
analysed by means of an approach that combines historical geography
and geopolitics. Indeed, as already shown by illicit opium production,
methamphetamine production in Burma thrives under conditions of
a longstanding war economy.
In Part Two, sociologist
Joël Meissonnier investigates contemporary
conditions in mainland Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, that
help to sustain the yaa baa economy. The sociological ‘method
of circuits’ is used to discern patterns in the transport and marketing
of methamphetamine pills across the region. The purpose here is
to describe the actual circulation of methamphetamine, while at
the same time highlight the interests and social interactions of
drug intermediaries that stand between producer and consumer. Charting
the yaa baa circuit in this way makes it possible to identify
the possible geographic passage points, inter-nodal transfers, and
the moments and places where illicit drug supplies change hands,
as well as to profile those who handle the transactions and the owners who are in charge. It then becomes
possible to reconstruct movements by which the circuit is sustained
over time by seeing how new yaa baa consumers are drawn into
the circuit, and new dealers are incited to resort to trafficking.
Joël Meissonnier then opens
Part Three with an historical overview of circumstances faced by
successive generations of young Thais during the last quarter of
the 20th century. This is undertaken to identify the
socio-historical origins of methamphetamine consumption among Thai
youth. In brief, the 1970s in Thailand saw the emergence of an educated
society whose younger members shared a political conscience; during
the 1980s, by contrast, a new generation possessing ambitions rather
than convictions had come to the fore. By the late 1990s a third
generation of Thai youth had materialized whose members were far
more hedonistic than their predecessors. Dazzled by consumerism,
this proved also to be the generation of young Thais most inclined
to use methamphetamine.
In line with the sociological approach adopted in Part Three, the study then
addresses the current state of two major social institutions in
Thailand, the school and the family, to show how each has inadvertently
helped to expand the numbers of youngsters and young adults who
use methamphetamine. Religion has also played an indirect role.
The analysis explains how the workings of these institutions effectively
render many young people defenceless against the prospect of being
lured into illicit drug use. This is so because yaa baa in
Thailand is inexpensive, easily accessible, and ubiquitous—even
for school-age young people.
Taking into account methamphetamine user practices in Thailand that vary between
youngsters and adults, and between city-dwellers and those in the
countryside, the purpose of the final section of Part Three is to
construct a model that differentiates ATS consumers according to
their motivations and financial interests. This abstract model,
which aims to simplify reality without falsifying it, demonstrates
the complexity of social patterns that characterize the market for
yaa baa in Thailand. Moreover, it serves as a foundation
for widening the geographical scope of the analysis, as from this
original model is generated affiliated hypotheses on methamphetamine
use in the three neighbouring countries of Laos, Burma, and Cambodia.
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
& Joël Meissonnier
[1] Bangkok-Paris: IRASEC-L’Harmattan, 2002.
[2] “Yaa Maa is now ‘Madness Drug’”, Bangkok
Post, 19 July 1996. “Old Habits Die Hard”,
Bangkok
Post, 6 Dec. 1998. “Yaa baa, la pilule qui rend fou”, Gavroche, July
2000.
[3] “Border Supplies Compound the Problem”,
Bangkok Post, 23 Nov. 1998; “Junta Gets Blame for
Drug Threat”, Bangkok Post, 18 Mar. 2000.
[4] Jean-Marie Pelt, Drogues et plantes
magiques (Paris: Fayard, 1983). Pharmacognosy is a “descriptive pharmacology dealing with crude drugs and
simples” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth
Edition [Springfield: Merriam-Webster, 1995]).
[5] Regarding addiction to sports practice,
refer to Claire Carrier, “Approche clinique du dopage” in Revue
Toxibase n°3, (September 2001), pp. 11-14.
[6] J.-M. Pelt (1983), p. 14. Also refer
to Antonio Escohotado, A Brief History of Drugs: from the Stone
Age to the Stoned Age (Rochester: Park Street Press, 1999),
p. 161.
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