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Thursday, 2 May, 2002, 10:15 GMT 11:15 UK
The drug that makes users 'crazy'
![]() The struggle to save a drug-addled father and his baby
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At one point the rescued baby is dropped on the roof, sending him skidding back into the arms of the madman, before again being retrieved. Welcome to the world of crazy medicine, a world in which a pernicious form of speed has taken grip. It's a world only too obviously evident if you go to Thailand where the narcotic - locally known as yaba - is every drug-taker's favourite tipple at present.
Yaba causes the brain to flood with a substance called dopamine, causing huge exhilaration but then terrible lows. Even low levels of abuse (one pill a day for a few months) can produce clinical depression and psychosis, a condition the no-nonsense Thais treat with raw electric shock treatment in their psychiatric hospitals. Bangkok Hilton The Thai police and judicial system are equally unequivocal in dealing with takers: dealers in only small amounts can get the death penalty while erratic drug behaviour in the streets can earn summary execution, as seen in several dramatic incidents in BBC One's MacIntyre Investigates.
This new epidemic is fuelled by supplies from Thailand's maverick neighbour and long time foe, Burma. There, production of this drug is going vertical - this year 800 million tablets of yaba are scheduled to be produced from labs strung along the Thai-Burma border.
However, that is where Donal MacIntyre and four other BBC journalists ended up last autumn during the production of Thursday's programme. It's a trip which yielded proof of Burmese involvement in the drug trade. We saw drugs being seized from soldiers after they were caught in an ambush by rebel soldiers; and found a Burmese army garrison which served as a depot for storing the drug. Over here Recently, huge batches of these drugs have been intercepted on their way to Europe, transported by ship and by plane. Typically the drugs find their way onto the streets of Thailand and into areas popular with tourists.
One night we came across several bike boys dancing drunk in the street. They offered drugs to Donal who, as an experienced undercover drugs buyer, asked for an amount he knew they could not possibly have to hand - and was somewhat shocked when they offered to supply. An Irishman struggling to speak Thai to drunken teenage dealers - and all played out in front of one of the biggest transvestite clubs in Thailand.
MacIntyre Investigates will be screened in the UK on BBC One on Thursday, 2 May at 2100BST.
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