Seizures of yaba, Asia’s ‘crazy medicine’, shoot up in Myanmar's crisis-hit Rakhine
Seized pills, which sell for around US$1-2 each, were marked with the ‘WY’ stamp of the ethnic Wa drug lords who run Myanmar’s lucrative narcotics trade
Myanmar police have seized more than US$5 million worth of methamphetamine pills in the north of violence-racked Rakhine state this month, an officer said Sunday.
Millions of the caffeine-laced meth tablets were intercepted in Maungdaw district, the centre of an army-led crackdown that has driven more than half a million Rohingya Muslims to flee across the border into Bangladesh in just two months.
Myanmar troops poured into the area in late August to launch a counteroffensive against Rohingya militants who attacked police posts. This grew into a full-blown ethnic cleansing campaign against the Muslim minority, according to the UN and others.
As the region reels from the refugee crisis, a lucrative narcotics trade continues across the border into Bangladesh, where there is high demand for the addictive meth pills known by their Thai name “yaba” or “crazy medicine”.
“We have seized 3,563,355 stimulant tablets from five drugs trafficking cases starting from this month in Maungdaw,” local anti-drugs officer Maung Maung Yin said.
It was the largest monthly haul in the area since February when police launched a statewide anti-narcotics operation, he said.