UWSA Buys 10 Tons of Amphetamine Component

By LAWI WENG

The United Wa State Army (UWSA) in Burma’s Shan State has recently bought from Thai suppliers 10 tons of pseudoephedrine, a main component of amphetamines, according to a report by the Shan Herald Agency for News.

Narcotics manufacturers usually extract pseudoephedrine from cough medicine and pills sold openly in pharmacies, but the preparations containing it are being progressively removed from the shelves because of misuse. The Shan Herald Agency for News quoted a Thai businessman at the Thai-Burmese border as saying the UWSA, an armed ethnic ceasefire group which earns large sums of money from the amphetamines trade, “don’t need to raid the drug stores for cold-relief pills any more.”

In a crackdown in October on over-the-counter sales of pseudoephedrine, Thai authorities seized more than 500,000 cold-relief pills in raids in the Thai border town of Mae Sai.

Thailand and the US are at the head of efforts to combat the UWSA drugs trade, and on November 13 the US Treasury Department froze the assets of 17 companies and 26 individuals linked to the ceasefire group and its commander, Wei Hsueh Kang, who is also known as Wei Xuegang.

A UWSA source told The Irrawaddy that UWSA leaders had recently changed their business addresses in the Burmese border town of Tachilek in anticipation of the US Treasury Department moves.

On November 17, Burmese police arrested three people in Tachilek’s Nine Stars Hotel on suspicion of smuggling amphetamine pills. The police seized 50,000 pills.

The UWSA declared its territory opium-free in 2005 after pressure by the Chinese government on ceasefire groups in Shan State to give up opium production in the Golden Triangle region by 2015.

However, the UWSA continues to produce large amounts of amphetamines, and Burma remains the largest source of methamphetamine pills in Asia, according to the US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement.