Story from Sanook. Video from Thai Rath

The red song thaew driver, who followed a white sedan around the moat road waving a sword in Chiang Mai, has now been charged by the police.

Sanook reports that 69 year old ‘Son’ has now been charged with having a knife in public and behaving in an intimidating manner that could scare the public.

The original video showed the public transport driver tailgating a white Honda Jazz, waving a large knife or sword.

But Son insists he acted because he was “furious about the driving of the man behind the wheel of the white car”.

He claims that the white car was cutting in and out of traffic dangerously before the car braked in a “dangerous manner” three times, almost causing him crash into the back of the vehicle.

He remained adamant that, despite the post being made by a woman, it was a man driving… “a woman would not behave like this, believe me” he told a Channel 7 reporter. Sanook showed the man apologising and doing a wai.

They also reported that the head of the Chiang Mai song thaews as saying that the driver had been warned about his conduct. He said that Son had never been in trouble before.

The head of the infamous Chiang Mai red song thaews says he has spoken with a driver after the man wielded a sword out of his window at another driver who he claimed had tooted his horn.

But that’s it. Nothing more.

CCTV on the Maneenopparat Road shows the incident as the song thaew driver tailgates the white Honda Jazz, waving the sword out of his driver-side window .

The hatchback driver had earlier posted about the incident on Monday. He says that the song thaew had cut in front of him and he had sounded his horn. He was then chased around the city moat.

The post was later deleted.

Bunniam Buntha, head of the local song thaew association, says he spoke to the driver who admitted that he was angry and waved the long knife out the window. He says he was warned the driver that there may be more questioning with a view to possible punishment.

At this stage no police action has been taken.

SOURCE: Sanook

The number of seizures of high-purity crystal methamphetamine are surging into northern Thailand. The demand rises and the methods of detection and enforcement also improve. It’s a vicious circle.

Authorities say the number of drug seizures have risen 1000% in just the past 2 years, a stark indication of the growth in industrial-scale production in neighboring Myanmar.

Some 18.4 tonnes of crystal methamphetamine or ‘ice’, was seized in Thailand last year, according to preliminary statistics from the Thai Office of the Narcotics Control Board. They know it’s a tiny proportion of the amounts produced and shipped out undetected.

That figure is up from 5.2 tonnes in 2017 and 1.6 tonnes in 2016. It’s more than three times the amount captured across all of Southeast Asia five years ago – a staggering rise in production and distribution.

Thailand remains a major trafficking route for the artificial drug manufactured in Myanmar’s Shan and Kachin states – the north-eastern states of Myanmar that border China, Laos and Thailand.

Police say organised crime groups work with local pro-government militias and armed rebels to set-up “super labs” and allow transport through the regions to borders beyond.

The same mega-labs are also pumping out ‘cocktail’ tablets of methamphetamine, mixed with caffeine and other ‘fillers’. The drug is nicknamed ‘yaba’ in Thailand. Specialist chemists and ‘cooks’ are brought in from Taiwan and China to run the meth labs in Myanmar, while the ingredients and lab equipment mostly come from China.

The methamphetamine tablets are a low-grade recreational drug, inexpensive and popular with blue-collar workers and low-end recreational drug users across South East Asia. The price for a ‘yaba’ pill has plummeted from around 200 baht to 80 baht in the past five years.

But the Golden Triangle, bordering north-eastern Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, has a long history of illicit drug trafficking.

It came to the West’s notice as a cultivation hub for opium and heroin refining but those, now, easily detected crops are being replaced with methamphetamine production. The factories are easily hidden underneath the jungle canopy, and with the assistance of ‘co-operative’ local authorities, armed gangs and state-sponsored militias, the precursor drugs and final product move in and out with little trouble.

Once the drugs have made their way through Thailand the drug syndicates use “motherships” that intercept the drugs off the Andaman coast and distribute them to other parts of South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Whilst the growth in production and purity of the drugs is alarming authorities, they are also intercepting and detecting a lot more of the road shipments making their way across the Thai borders. But they readily admit they are only netting a tiny part of the larger iceberg.

Despite the frequent showcasing of large drug hauls by Thai police, the vast majority of the drugs coming out of the back-doors of Myanmar’s meth labs are getting through undetected.