Disturbingly, drugs are increasingly a problem involving young people – as young as 12 or 13.
Thailand’s struggle with drugs, particularly ya ba (methamphetamine) and its close relative ya ice, the crystal version, but also heroin, opium, cocaine and marijuana is an endless and depressing task, with the police sometimes appearing to gain an upper hand, sometimes losing it.
It’s a job that has to be done, however; the social consequences are manifold, ranging from crime and violence to broken families and severe mental problems as addicts hunt for the next hit, not caring what kind of damage they do to others.
Phuket is not a big centre for drug gangs. It is not a major distribution centre either and the big drug lords are elsewhere in the country. But, like the marketing department of any aggressive company, they want to sell their product into every small corner of the country. Phuket is one such corner, and it’s suffering for it.
Police admit it is difficult to pin down the big drug lords. Though they can sometimes move up the chain, arresting a user, then his or her supplier, then the bigger distributor, eventually they hit a wall of silence. In any case, the drug lords, as mentioned, are outside Phuket.
All the local police can can do is hand the information they winkle out of the small fish, and pass it on to police in other parts of the country.
Wiroj Suwannawong, head of the Anti-Narcotics Task Force in Phuket explains that today’s drug networks resemble a pyramid, with the base consisting of hundreds, possibly thousands, of drug users and small dealers – often users and dealers. At the pinnacle of the pyramid are the well protected drug lords.
At the slightest sign that confessions to the police may identify the people at the top, it is a simple matter to order a layer of the pyramid removed. Permanently. The mid-level dealers in the chain know this, hence their silence when arrested.
“The mid-level dealers won’t say who they bought from. All they will do is admit to their own part in the overall network,” Mr Wiroj said.
The big problem in Phuket, as elsewhere in Thailand, is ya ba and ya ice. “Drug dealers on the island – sometimes Phuket people, sometimes from elsewhere originally – buy ya ba or ya ice in bulk from a producer or a bigger dealer, and then resell it in smaller amounts to smaller dealers further down the pyramid,” Mr Wiroj said.
At the bottom of the pyramid, the selling methods begin to resemble relationship selling – small dealers, often addicts themselves, buy “upline” and sell “downline” to friends, as this is safer, less likely to get them caught.
When police do arrest a user carrying drugs, they move swiftly to roll up the local network. Their target is three days to move as high up the pyramid as they can before hitting the wall of silence.
Drugs seized used to be sent to the Regional Medical Sciences Centre (RMSC) in Trang or Surat Thani provinces, but – a sign of how drug sales and arrests are increasing – Phuket now has its own RMSC, north of the Heroines’ Monument on Thepkrasattree Rd.
There, the drugs seized are counted or weighed, and the drugs tested to ascertain their strength. The results of this analysis are used in the subsequent court case. When no longer required as evidence, the drugs are destroyed, usually by incineration.
Can the police win? Not definitively. All they can realistically do is keep a lid on the problem. Mr Wiroj believes the answer lies with families; addiction is much less likely to surface in a warm, loving family.
“What we do is pick up the pieces after the family has fallen apart. Good care by families can deter young people from trying drugs.
“I also believe that Thailand’s laws must be applied more rigorously so that the risks of being in the drug trade outweigh the potential profits,” Mr Wiroj said.
The drug networks are all-pervasive. Even dealers locked up for drug offences are thought to be keeping their lucrative networks alive from inside Phuket Provincial Prison, using smuggled mobile phones to arrange deliveries and payments.
More than 80 per cent of the people in the prison are serving sentences for drug-related offences.
The Prison Director, Rapin Nichanont, said that while there is no clear evidence so far that prisoners are running drug networks, there are strong suspicions that this is the case.
Mr Rapin said he has stepped up patrol and surveillance in the prison, and any prisoners caught in possession of a mobile phone are in big trouble. CCTV cameras are also to be installed soon to keep an eye on prisoners and on people on the outside who may attempt to throw mobile phones over the walls.
Mr Rapin has sympathy for those running the big prisons. “Prisoners in Phuket are just the small dealers though, while the prisoners in Nakorn Sri Thammarat prison, for example, are the big-time drug dealers. There are about 5,000 prisoners over there, so it is difficult for the officers to search all of them,” he said.
Is any part of Phuket a particular focus of drug dealing?
Recently, the superintendent of Thalang Police Station, Pol Col Witroon Kongsudjai, said that it was “becoming clear” that Thalang District was Phuket’s biggest drug trading area, especially the Baan Liporn and Pa Khlok areas. Many of the couriers and small drug dealers, he added, are young people between 20 and 30 years old.
However, it appears that this concentration in Thalang is more likely a result of geography.
Thalang District Chief Naruenart Supattaraprateep said the drugs enter the island by air, through the airport, by road, through Tah Chat Chai, or by boat, through small piers on the northeast coast.
All of these points are in the north of the island – in Thalang District – and as a result this is where the small-scale distribution chains begin.
“The drug situation here is quite serious, but we crack down on each area regularly,” Mr Naruenart added.
Apart from arrests, many agencies in Phuket are involved in various anti-drug campaigns such as the White Patong Project launched jointly by Patong Municipality and Kathu police in an attempt to get the town involved in reducing drug problems.
Patong, because it is a tourism centre, is a special case. Pol Col Arayapan Pukbuakhao, superintendent of Kathu Police Station, said that the large numbers of tourists with their fat wallets inevitably attract drug dealers.
That said, he adds that the dealers are not high up the pyramid. “There are not many big dealers here but there are quite a lot of users who buy drug from various places. It’s more a focus of drug use than of dealing.”
He believes a major part of the solution is more vigilance at the entry points – the airport, local piers and the Tah Chat Chai police check point.
“Drugs can be delivered by air, sea or road, so it is better if the equipment to detect drugs can be upgraded to catch the drugs shipments as they come into the island. It will cost money, but prevention is better than trying to cure things after the drugs have entered the distribution system,” the colonel explains.
Are drug enforcement officials in favour of another nationwide War on Drugs, such as was declared by then-PM Thaksin Shinawatra in 2003? It does seem as though cracking down on drugs is a priority of the new government headed by Thaksin’s sister and current premier Yingluck Shinawatra.
The 2003 War on Drugs though was a failure. It slowed drug dealing for a while, but at a terrible cost – more than 2,000 dead across Thailand, more than a dozen in Phuket. Though there were suggestions that police were carrying out extrajudicial killings of suspected dealers, many of the deaths were laid at the feet of the big dealers, cutting out layers of the pyramid below them.
It is also thought that a considerable number of deaths were not related to drugs at all, but to people settling “business disputes”, knowing that the murders would most likely be treated by police as drug-related and therefore only cursorily investigated.
Thaksin declared the ‘war’ a success. Plainly, it was not, as today’s situation on Phuket demonstrates. But local officials are still in favour of a government-backed push to crack down on drug dealing.
Mr Wiroj said he agrees with the Thaksin “way of justice for drug dealers”, but added that it is important to be sure those targeted were involved in the drug trade.
“It would be an example for other drug dealers; it might make them afraid to trade in drugs. But we need to be certain that they are dealers,” he said.
Experience in other countries has shown that police are likely to be involved in a never-ending war of attrition, rather than the one-off, done-and-dusted solution which changes nothing in the long term.
Prevention, they say, is better than cure. The most effective solution has to be a joint campaign to stamp on the producers and dealers while at the same time educating children and parents on the dangers of drugs.