Introduction
p. ix-xiv
Texte intégral
Just say no is not an option. Just say “know” is.
— Antonio Escohotado, A Brief History of Drugs, 1999
1The 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.
2Southeast 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 baa1 for yaa maa in an attempt to change the image of a product whose consumption levels had already reached alarming proportions.
3Regional 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.
4Additionally, 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 2002.2
5The 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.
6The 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 characterising the drug trade proceeds as much from its illicit nature and the conflict-ridden contexts in which it thrives, as it does from the militarisation of anti-drug operations and policies.
7Before 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 recognised 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.3 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.
8It 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.4 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.5
9Thus, 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.
10Given 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.
11However, 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 widely consumed in both 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.
12These 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 recognised 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.
13Various interrelated social patterns are often cited to explain the explosive growth in methamphetamine consumption in Thailand. The present study highlights two social distinctions that characterise 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.
14In Part One of the book, geographer Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy begins with a brief printer 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.
15In 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.
16Joël 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 materialised 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.
17In 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.
18Taking 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 characterise 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.
Comparative Profiles of Burma and Thailand
Country Profiles6
BURMA7 | THAILAND |
GENERAL INFORMATION | |
Area: 676,577 km2 Population: 45.6 million Capital: Rangoon Political Regime: Military dictatorship |
Area: 513,115 km2 Population: 62 million Capital: Bangkok Political Regime: Constitutional monarchy |
POLITICAL INFORMATION for year 2000 | |
Head of State: General Than Shwe, Secretary of State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) Prime Minister: Khin Nyunt Official language: Burmese Main religion: Buddhism (85%) Ethnic composition: Burmese (68%), Shan (9%), Karen (7%) |
Head of State: King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) Prime Minister: Thaksin Shinawatra Official language: Thai Main religion: Buddhism (90%) Ethnic composition: Thais (75%), Chinese (14%), Malays (6%) |
ECONOMIC INFORMATION for year 2000 | |
GDP: $63.7 billion Growth rate: 4.9% Main trade partners: Exports Imports |
GDP: $119 billion Growth rate: 4.3% Main trade partners: Exports Imports |
PRODUCTION OF ILLICIT DRUGS | |
Opium: 108,700 hectares of poppy in 2000 ATS: Undetermined quantity Cannabis: Marginal production |
Opium: 890 hectares of poppy in 2000 ATS: Undetermined quantity Cannabis: Marginal production |
Notes de bas de page
1“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.
2“Border Supplies Compound the Problem”, Bangkok Post, 23 Nov. 1998; “Junta Gets Blame for Drug Threat”, Bangkok Post, 18 Mar. 2000.
3Jean-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)].
4Regarding addiction to sports practice, refer to Claire Carrier, “Approche clinique du dopage” Revue Toxibase No. 3 (Sept. 2001): 11–4.
5J.-M. Pelt, Drogues et plantes magiques, 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.
6Only the two Southeast Asian countries that are highlighted in the present study are included here.
7The Union of Burma was renamed “Myanmar” on 25 June 1989 by the military dictatorship then known by the acronym “SLORC” (State Law and Order Restoration Council). Rangoon, the capital, has also been renamed Yangon.
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