Too bad to be true – the 2 baht meth pill

Meth pills that cost 300 baht each just a few years ago, are now available on the street for as little as 2 baht each, according to police and the Bangkok Post, but are we obliged to believe them? Why would we start now?

The revelation comes in an article in Bangkok Post which begins by talking about the speed problem, confusing the grim situation on Thailand’s roads with the drug problem.

There is, and probably never has been any speed problem in Thailand, nor any other country for that matter, except for foreigners on motorbikes. Speed and meth? Dogs and cats, apples and pears. Someone, somewhere, does not know their amphetamines from their elbow.

It’s only a matter of time before someone runs a fake story about drug dealers giving away free drugs to school kids to get them hooked. It’s a pretty standard urban myth that pops up early in all “war on drugs” narratives.

It’s probably never happened and never will.

And why not? Because all dealers can sell every single pill they have. There is no need whatsoever to give away free drugs. Buy-one-get-one-free narcotics do not exist. There are no promotions for one week only. The line of customers goes down the street, around the corner and over the horizon.

Undercover officers in Muang district claim to have paid a dealer 4,000 baht and received a plastic bag containing 2,000 speed pills in return. If the police said it, it must be true.

The transaction took place on Naraesuan Road, near the 3rd Special Forces Regiment base. It followed the arrest of two other suspects with 168 meth pills on Thursday morning at a house in Muang district.

After questioning the pair, police set out in search of the third suspect, who has now been detained at the Muang Lop Buri police station along with the other two.

Jeremy Douglas, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime regional representative in Bangkok, is a man whose job and career depend on drugs and the wars against them. Douglas claims that organised crime syndicates and armed groups in cahoots with rogue police and border forces across the region have exploited the pandemic and political instability in Myanmar to expand production the past year, and he’s right. And global warming is caused by Bedouins with drilling rigs, of course.

Prices of meth pills have plunged because of the amount being produced in the region. Law enforcers claim to have seized one billion methamphetamine tablets in East and Southeast Asia in 2021, but what possible basis is there for believing them?

All that is required for a drug market to flourish is large numbers of people living in abject misery.