Thai police have seized a record amount of the drug methamphetamine in the west of the country, near the border with Myanmar.
Police officers found 50 million pills hidden in a truck they stopped at a joint military-police checkpoint in Kanchanaburi province, while a man and a woman inside the vehicle were immediately arrested.
The amount of pills found represents a kind of record for the Thai police.
Thailand’s Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters that drugs used to be smuggled into Thailand’s northern and northeastern provinces, but the trade has moved to western provinces such as Kanchanaburi because of more intense surveillance and security along old routes.
Anutin said increased fighting between Myanmar’s military and ethnic minority rebels and armed groups has increased the risks for smugglers along their old routes.
Neighboring Myanmar has historically been a major drug-producing area in the region, partly because of lax security measures in border areas, where minority ethnic groups have long fought for greater autonomy from the central government, and some of the armed groups there have been involved in narcotics production for decades.
After the military seized power in that country, having ousted the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a February 2021 coup, there was armed resistance against the military across the country, further destabilizing the country.
A June 2023 report by the UN drug agency on drug trafficking in East and Southeast Asia warns that the massive trade in methamphetamine and other illegal drugs shows no signs of slowing down, Beta writes.
Photo: Shuttershock
