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The Nation - Jan 07, 2000
Politics
Drug traffickers change route
ANTI-narcotics authorities yesterday warned that amphetamine-trafficking ethnic Wa and ethnic Hor Chinese insurgents from eastern Burma have changed their trafficking route, relying instead on flights coming in from the Northeast. Narcotics Control Board secretary general Sorasit Saengprasert said yesterday that the amphetamine traffickers had stopped using their normal route through northern Thailand to get to Bangkok. They have instead been ferrying their drugs to Bangkok on domestic flights from Nong Khai, Nakhon Phanom and Ubon Ratchathani in the Northeast..
Sorasit said the domestic airports being used were too small to be equipped with narcotics detectors. He said even Bangkok International Airport failed to check for drugs at its facility for these domestic flights. PM's Office Minister Jurin Laksanavisit would today discuss installing narcotics detectors with Thai Airways Co and would hold similar talks with police with the aim of setting up an anti-drug squad equipped with sniffer dogs at domestic airports, he said.
At a news conference yesterday, Mae Hong Son airport director Somnuek Senabin dismissed Sorasit's claim that the airport had no narcotics-detecting equipment. ''Mae Hong Son airport has for long had metal and narcotics-detection equipment installed,'' he asserted. However, he did add that the airport authority had no duty to check hand-held luggage carried by passengers. The anti-narcotics intelligence authorities, who have taken a pounding for being ineffectual after the recent chance uncovering of 2.6 million amphetamine tablets on a housing estate in northern Bangkok, said yesterday the drugs belonged to a trafficking group known as Maha Ja, active in the Muang Mae Hong Son district.
The intelligence authorities added that airline officials might have turned a blind eye to couriers carrying luggage containing drugs.
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