IN THIS STORY:
>History of the drug trade
>On our shores
>Addressing the threat
>Slowing the epidemic

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China also has been hit hard by the new drug epidemic. Yunnan, the province in southwestern China closest to Burma's UWSA country, was the first area to have large numbers of amphetamine addicts. Now drug usage is soaring in Shanghai and Beijing. While China had less than 70,000 drug abusers a decade ago, narcotics experts estimate the country now has more than 6 million heroin and yaba addicts. More than 80 percent of these addicts are less than 35 years old.

On our shores
Yaba has made its way to the West, and the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) now believes amphetamine-type stimulants are the second most widely used drugs in the world.

Although the amount of heroin that enters the United States from Asia has dropped by more than half since the 1960s, yaba use has risen sharply since the drug first arrived on our shores three years ago. In August, federal agents in Sacramento, Calif., made the largest-ever U.S. bust of yaba traffickers, arresting 10 people who allegedly smuggled 75,000 pills from Southeast Asia to the United States. American drug control experts have expressed fear that yaba will move from its current stronghold in California schools and in western states and spread to communities across the nation, much the same way OxyContin first gained a following in the rural South and then spread throughout the country.

In Europe, according to the UNDCP, "amphetamine-type stimulants [now] are the drugs of choice among 15 and 16 year olds." Last summer, authorities seized more than 450,000 yaba tablets in Switzerland.

Yaba has caused a host of other problems as well. Injectable yaba and heroin are responsible for most of China's HIV cases, in part because Chinese drug users rarely employ sanitary practices. In some parts of Yunnan, more than 70 percent of injecting drug users now are infected with HIV, and the United Nations recently estimated China would have 10 million HIV infections by 2010, the most in the world. Injecting drug use also is a major cause of HIV in Burma and other Southeast Asian nations.

Criminologists also blame yaba-related psychosis for a recent wave of brutal killings in Thailand and other Southeast Asian nations in which paranoid amphetamine addicts have murdered many of their family members. Roughly 70,000 Thais were convicted of yaba-related crimes in 2001, up from 16,000 in 1997.

Amphetamines and heroin also provide easy sources of revenue for militant groups operating in the region, and area Bush administration officials have called it "the second front in the war on terror." In November, Hong Kong authorities caught two Pakistanis trying to sell a massive quantity of drugs to undercover agents. After the arrest, Hong Kong's justice department said it believed the Pakistanis intended to use the drug revenues to buy Stinger antiaircraft missiles for al Qaeda. Meanwhile, Thai officials have said Islamic militants in southern Thailand rely on narcotics to fund their activities, which include shooting policemen and bombing public buildings. 

Addressing the threat
Until recently, East Asia, the United States, and Europe did little to address the yaba threat. Until late 2001, law enforcement in the United States and Europe were largely unaware of yaba.

Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and other poor Southeast Asian nations had little money to spend fighting drugs. China treated drug addiction as a national embarrassment and spent virtually no money on drug or HIV education, and surveys have shown that fewer than 15 percent of Chinese understand how HIV is spread. In fact, when a volunteer health worker showed Yunnan villagers a photograph of a red condom on a white background, the village residents were sure they recognized the object and confidently told the volunteer that it was a picture of the Japanese flag.

The Burmese junta did even less than China. The cash-strapped junta allowed the Wa to operate unchecked, possibly because some Burmese military officials received kickbacks from traffickers. According to the U.S. State Department, Burmese officials, particularly army police personnel posted in outlying areas, "are either directly involved in the drug business or are paid to allow the drug business to be conducted by others."

Now, however, countries have started to unite to fight this new drug war. Long wary of violating its neighbor's sovereignty, Thailand has begun considering launching air strikes against yaba factories inside Burma. Several Thai politicians have advocated strikes, and the Thai army is believed to favor this policy. Thai armed forces already have begun firearms training for villagers in the north in case they need to fight incursions by drug traffickers or the Burmese military.

The Thai army already occasionally has crossed the border in pursuit of traffickers. In May 2002, Thai troops raided an area along the Thai-Burmese border that's allegedly full of amphetamine labs. Later that month, Thai forces again clashed with uniformed Burmese army troops along the border as they searched for drug gangs.

At the same time, Thailand has stepped up its domestic interdiction efforts and has boosted its cooperation with neighboring countries other than Burma. In early 2003, Thai Prime Minister Dr. Thaksin Shinawatra identified yaba abuse as the biggest problem plaguing Thai society and launched a new zero-tolerance anti-yaba policy. Under the policy, the Thai government is stepping up its public education efforts about drug use. Meanwhile, Thai police draw up names of suspected drug dealers and couriers, are given quotas of drug arrests to fulfill, and are allowed more liberty to use tougher - some say illegal - methods to monitor, interrogate, and arrest drug suspects. 

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