Phnom Penh, 17/03/2004. Crack smoker
© John Vink / Magnum
According to the annual NACD (National Authority for Combating Drugs) report issued on Tuesday 12th August and carried out with the technical support of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Cambodia sticks to its denomination as a transit country for illegal drugs and stands more and more as the traffic crossroads in this region, but remains a “minor” narcotic market in the Greater Mekong sub-region.
However, the document reveals that the status of drugs in Cambodia reached a critical point in 2007. Indeed, if methamphetamines are the most commonly used drugs in Cambodia, their stronger and more addictive version, known as “ice”, a crystallised version of methamphetamine, may well take over from yama methamphetamine tablets.
The NACD stresses the fact that crystallised methamphetamines- commonly known as “crystal”, “ice” or “glass”, appeared in Cambodia's official statistics reports in 2005 and its marketing is now thought to have stretched to a worldwide dimension. A number of foreigners have been arrested as they attempted to take the drug out of the country, while small quantities reached the Cambodian territory. The two largest drug seizures were carried out at Phnom Penh international airport, and another two, equally considerable, were carried out in Poipet, which is the main border crossing to Thailand.
In 2007 for the first time, Cambodia emerged as a potential producer of methamphetamines. Nevertheless, the country started being fingered as a hidden stronghold for drug production a few years ago, particularly in 2003 after a violent campaign of repression launched by the Thai authorities against drug lords on their own territory. In May 2006, Sar Kheng, the Minister of Interior, asserted with firmness that “Cambodia is not a producing country”. Gone were the covert laboratories discovered three years earlier along the Thai border: according to the Cambodian authorities, what remained then was only a group of tiny isolated craft labs, not involved in drug synthesisation but in tablet cutting destined to the local market.
A massive catch changes the terms in 2007
In April 2007, the authorities of Cambodia carried out a raid in a farm in the province of Kampong Speu, situated about 50 miles to the South West of Phnom Penh, and seized a large craft laboratory which specialized in the making of the first two steps of methamphetamine manufacture. This discovery was the first of its kind in the country and revealed the potential existence of a local production.
With the help of the American “Drug Enforcement Administration” and of the UNODC, the NACD was able to identify in situ the precursor chemicals to crystallised methamphetamine drugs. It was then estimated that more than a ton of chloroephedrine precursors may have been produced on the premises before the dismantling of the laboratory.
Besides, a year before the Kampong Speu laboratory was uncovered, a Chinese man and two Thai men had been jailed for having smuggled palladium through Cambodia. Palladium is a chemical considered as a grade 2 precursor which contributes to the manufacturing process of crystallised methamphetamine.
Supply growing in Cambodia
Clues seem to indicate, according to report analysts, that local synthetic drug production is “increasing” and is “more organized”: the diversity of the forms of methamphetamines available on the market, the growing number of powder seizures, precursors and machines destined to cut yama tablets.
When the NACD report was launched in 2007, the UNODC consultant who helped collecting information drew attention to the fact that the characteristics of the crystallised methamphetamine analysed in Cambodia did not match those of the crystal coming from traditional sources of illegal drug production. This meant that those substances came from an alternate source, either new in the region, or... from Cambodia.
David Harding, technical advisor for the drug program of the NGO “Friends International” pointed out the fact that “originally, crystallised methamphetamine arrived massively on the market at the beginning of 2006, just as illegal drugs such as heroin and yama methamphetamine had suddenly become difficult to find and more expensive to buy”. This sudden outburst of large quantities of “ice” on the market, at a time when a panel of constraints made other classic drugs unavailable, seems like an “anomaly”, and confirms the hypothesis that this drug does not come from the usual paths.
In its report, the NACD explains the decline of arrests and seizures linked to drugs traffic by “a change in regional traffic modes, due to lower anti-drug activity carried out in Thailand, shortly after the 2006 Government change and which apparently led to a decline in drug traffic transiting through Cambodia and aiming for Thailand via the “Mekong Route”.
The rising popularity of ice
The NADC stresses that while seizures of crystallised methamphetamine plummeted by almost two thirds since 2006, its consumption soared without precedent in 2007, “as shown by the rate of ice consumption among street children in Phnom Penh, equivalent to 42.6% (NGO data, Mith Samlanh/Friends ) and the rate of admissions for treatment of ice users in centres managed by the Government, equivalent to 34%”.
In the top list of the most popular drugs in Cambodia, crystal was classified in 2007 as number two just after yama.
Report analysts warn that ice, being a lot stronger than yama, will have without doubt serious consequences on health. They call for a systematic mentioning of ice in the lists used by the systems controlling the consumption of psychoactive substances.
Young drug addicts more present in the border provinces
Who are those drug users? Men form a large part of the overall narcotic consumers, among which women only represent 6.5%. Farmers and labourers come first with more than a third (37.8%) followed by street children (16.8%), students (15.4%) and the unemployed (14%), according to the NACD.
Youngsters aged 25 or less are the main target, with more than 80% of known consumers.
National statistics state that the number of users, which had fallen down from 7,075 in 2005 to 6,500 in 2006, is thought to continue its decline, with 5,797 users identified in 2007 in Cambodia. These figures question the reliability of official statistics, which are contested by a number of experts, who themselves multiply the figures at least six times.
Furthermore, an NACD study stipulates that the largest numbers of drug addicts are situated first in the capital, Phnom Penh, and secondly in the provinces of Battambang and Banteay Meanchey. Provinces on the borders of Thailand and Laos are also particularly impacted. Among the population, the largest proportion of drug addicts is situated in the municipality of Pailin, closely followed by the provinces of Stung Treng, Sihanoukville, Koh Kong and Ratanakiri. The consumption of ATS (Amphetamine Type Stimulants), a family of synthetic drugs including yama and crystal, is largely predominant in the 24 towns and provinces of Cambodia, where more than 80% of the drug addicts are methamphetamine consumers. This does not cover Kratie, where 90.5% of the illegal drug users are glue “sniffers”.
Seizures concentrated in Phnom Penh
The NACD stresses that almost 50% of the seizures of crystallised methamphetamine and a quarter of those of heroin were carried out at Phnom Penh International Airport, as well as the single seizure of ecstasy pills in 2007. Furthermore, Cambodian authorities have uncovered operations of methamphetamine tablet-cutting in Phnom Penh and seized for the first time a rotating machine that could cut up to 10,000 tablets per hour.
Cambodia, an “attractive” country
The authors of the report reckon that “the porosity of the borders of Cambodia continue to make it an attractive country and a potential place of production and transit but also an ideal destination for trafficking, as proven by the large quantities of illegal drugs seized, whether they came in or out of the country”.
They also cast light on the fact that, as the economy of Cambodia is developing, the Department of Drug and Food of the Ministry of Health (DDF) finds itself more and more submerged by its own undertaking of product tracing and the granting of licenses. The department warned that “unless efforts are made to redefine the role, functions and largely increased abilities [of the DDF], it will become less and less apt to prevent the smuggling of legally imported substances” toward the clandestine circuits of illegal drug production, for instance.
To the present day, there is no evidence that narcotic consumption, associated with dangerous sexual practices and intravenous injections made with syringes that are not always sterilised, may have had real consequences on the spreading of HIV/AIDS in Cambodian society generally speaking. Nevertheless, it remains a source of worry for the future, since such a scenario has already happened in other countries.
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