New meth pills under 10 baht each flooding market

If you’ve been thinking of dabbling in meth but found the pills cost-prohibitive, drug cartels are here to help. They’ve been flooding the Northeast of Thailand with cheap methamphetamine pills, costing under 10 baht each, causing concern among authorities.

How do manufacturers manage to keep the cost of pills so low? The answer is insecticide.

Drug makers use insecticide as a precursor rather than pure amphetamines, which allows them to keep the cost of one pill as low as five baht. Over the past week, 10 million of these pills have been seized, according to senior officers from the Surasak Montri Task Force, as reported by TV Channel 7 yesterday.

The head of the 21st Ranger Forces Regiment and his team just confiscated 204,000 low-grade meth pills from a 25 year old fisherman. He was transporting the drugs packed in two sacks. The pills are sold for only five to seven baht each and have the letters WY stamped on them.

Tests revealed that these pills have insecticide as a precursor instead of amphetamine, making them potentially fatal in large quantities. Drug cartels are building a profitable market for these cheap pills in the Northeast by targeting young customers and workers.

After already seizing 10 million meth pills of the same variety over the past week the government is stepping up drug suppression and border patrol to prevent the influx of drugs from neighbouring countries.

The rise of cheap meth pills in the Northeast is alarming, as it could lead to more addiction and drug-related crimes. It also continues a dangerous trend of new modified strains of meth hitting the Thai markets.

Just last month, a doctor in Krabi warned about a dangerous new addictive substance found in meth pills. He said he recently uncovered a new type of meth pill that contains a highly-addictive substance, which leads to immediate addiction.