Man goes mad with machete

Lester:  A young man with a machete goes mad, swinging wildly at anyone near him.

00.01:00:05

Man with child hostage

A father takes his two year old hostage, and tells police he's about to murder the child.

00:14

In Thailand, they recognise this as yaa baa, they know the havoc a tiny pink pill can cause. Yaa baa means the crazy drug, and it's taken such a grip on Thailand many now admit it's a national emergency.

00:28

Music

Police gathered in dark

Lester:  Five a.m. on the Thai-Burma border, and Mae Sai police chief, Colonel Panurat Meepien and his 80 men are about to wake up a hillside village very abruptly.

00:55

Lester with Panurat and police in car

Lester:  Do they know where we're going to?

01:10

Panurat:  No, no. Even my men, they don't know.

Lester:  The colonel's Bangkok bosses have told him, close the border with Burma.

01:17

Lester:  Do you have information that amphetamines are here?

01:27

Panurat:  Yes. They're selling.

Lester enters house with Panurat

Lester:  He doesn't knock, no one asks for a search warrant, and by the time the suspect is properly awake, the colonel's army will have overturned anything that might conceal yaa baa.

01:39

Lester:   What are they saying they've found?

01:49

Panurat:  Amphetamines.

Lester:  Did they say how much?

Panurat:  About forty or fifty pills.

Lester:  Yaa baa, or methamphetamines, have become the drug of choice among the young, sometimes the very young.

02:06

Lester:   What are these?

02:12

Lester:  She says she's 16.

02:16

Girl

Panurat:  Asked her, you sell or not, she said no. And how many pill a day she took She said one, and where, where's her mummy; she said up on the hill.

02:18

Lester:  And because they're young and need money to buy yaa baa, they deal in yaa baa. If you want to use it, you've got to sell it to your friends. So Colonel Panurat sees small plastic bags as highly suspicious.

02:30

Panurat and Lester

Panurat:  He said he put some cookie or something. I said no cookie. Why small bag like this? Small bag like this, it mean you separate the amphetamine pill. Maybe five, maybe ten, to sell.

02:44

Lester:  He's a seller, not just a user.

Panurat:  Ah ha, ah ha.

Sunrise/raiding of house

Lester:  Sunrise, and the colonel's yaa baa net is about to catch a different fish. He want to know why the husband in this house isn't home.

03:05

Woman: He's never been involved with yaa baa or heroin --  if he had, we wouldn't have to rent this place. We would have bought our own house.

03:15

Husband arrives on bike

Lester:  Then, guess who turns up on a motorbike. And runs into Panurat's army.

03:22

It's not methamphetamines, but opium. Out looking for the new drug, police stumble on the old.

03:32

It surprises no one. This is the edge of the Golden Triangle. Refined over decades, the supply lines out of here channel half the world's and 80 percent of Australia's heroin.

03:42

Lester and  Panurat

Lester:  You think he'll go to jail.

03:52

Panurat:  Sure.

Lester:  How long?

Panurat:  Oh, few years.

Lester:  Now the drug lords are dealing in a new evil. Piggybacking their heroin business with a drug in many respects more dangerous and undeniably more affordable.

Panurat:  And if you compare with heroin, heroin very expensive. And also now,

03:58

Panurat

Super:

Col. PANURAT MEEPIEN

Police Chief, Mae Sai

the lower class, they cannot buy, you know, because expensive.

04:10

Mae Sai

Music

Lester:  In Mae Sai, it's easy to see why the colonel is struggling to close the cross border drug lanes.

04:31

Here, the river divides Thailand from Burma, the people wade or ride across the international line unconcerned by passports or visas.

04:39

Lester walks along path

Some hide from foreigners, others go on washing their syringe in a puddle. A few even sit and talk, knowing here there're over a line Colonel Panurat can't cross.

04:49

User

Bunchai:  We can't use the drugs in Thailand because police and village headmen will catch us.

05:01

Person with yaa baa

Lester:  This year, the Golden Triangle will sell Thai workers, students, nightclub goers and others, 200 million of these tiny speed pills.

05:15

Lester watchers users

Bunchai:  Taking lots of drugs... it's a pleasure - but I don't get enough rest. I see illusions... and I'm full of imagination.

05:26

Heroin preparation

Lester:  And here too, among addicts, yaa baa is close to its sister product, heroin.

05:43

But the users like the new drug because it mimics adrenalin, they become psychologically addicted to methamphetamines, craving the euphoria, the sense of strength and energy. Then, as they use more, they turn hyperactive, argumentative, aggressive and often paranoid.

05:50

User

Dum:  I never felt crazy - but sometimes I feel scared when I take a lot.  I'm scared that someone is going to kill me.  It's happened to me often.

06:10

Beyrer

Beyrer:  Patients who have amphetamine psychosis from heavy and prolonged use of amphetamines, have all the symptoms of an acute chronic paranoid schizophrenic.

06:21

Lester:   Epidemiologist and author, Chris Beyrer, has studied drug use in South East Asia. He's alarmed by the rise of Yaa baa.

06:34

Beyrer:  It can lead to this kind of, of psychotic paranoid state, and that is about as dangerous as a person can be.

06:40

Kidnapped woman being held on street

Music

06:50

Lester:  Dangerous for this elderly woman. Her yaa baa using kidnapper held a razor to her throat for three hours.

06:52

Dangerous for his deluded truck driver. The yaa baa he thought would keep him awake, drove him to climb a transmission tower.

07:01

Music

Beyrer

Super:

Dr. Chris BEYRER

Epidemiologist, John Hopkins Uni.

Beyrer:  They think that the television is talking specifically to them, that advertisements on the road are aimed at them, and this kind of psychotic delusionary state lends itself to violence against the self and violence against others. They are certainly capable of killing other people, particularly if they're armed.

07:11

Lester:  Thai police know the dangers with yaa baa addicts, and it shows in the way they deal with the problem. This user has just kidnapped a five year old.

07:33

FX:  Gun shot

07:42

Police trying to grab child

Lester:  To save the child, police sacrifice the user.

FX:  Gun shots

Lester:   With the last of his drug-driven energy the wounded man runs. When police reach him, he's slumped in a nearby paddock, dead.

07:51

Bangkok night club

Music

Lester:  Friday night on Suthisam Road, 800 kilometres from the Golden Triangle, Bangkok's nightspots are packed.

08:12

Music

Night club

Lester:  Yaa baa is now established among the sons and daughters at the affluent end of high society, so the pressure is on for Thailand to take action.

08:21

Police regularly raid the country's most popular bars and discos. The don't expect to find the drug, precisely because they make these busts visible.

08:30

Music

Lester:  It's about being seen.

Pakdinarunart

Super:

SUPISAM PAKDINARUNART

Lt. Colonel, Suthisam Police

Young users now know they take their yaa baa before they turn up here. Officers admit they can't solve the problem, but they can keep it somewhere else.

We look and we search all the time; and i want to keep out the drug from this area.

0008:41

Music

09:05

Jittiwutikarn

Super:

Dr. JAROON JITTIWUTIKARN

Drug Clinic Director

Jittiwutikarn:  Some of them do have hallucination, you know, because the drug causes damage to the brain.

09:07

Inside drug clinic

Lester:   Here's where Thailand's young finish up when the party's over. The country's drug clinics are overwhelmed, trying to repair young lives wrecked by yaa baa, like 18 year old Suwisut. He ended up in the clinic after bashing his grandfather, because he was convinced the old man was about to harm him.

09:15

Suwisut

Suwisut:  I felt paranoid...I lost my mind.  I was scared that someone would take me away.  I was hallucinating and was scared of everyone.

09:35

Jittiwutikarn

Jittiwutikarn:  They think they have a special power -- that they can jump from a high building without killing themselves. So maybe they just jump out and kill themselves. We have many, many case of this.

09:48

Nurse in drug clinic

10:03

Lester:   The medicine these young Thais take helps them beat their addiction. But for 85 percent the treatment still fails. The clinic's director says high school students right across Thailand are experimenting with methamphetamines.

10:05

Jittiwutikarn

Jittiwutikarn:  Maybe about 40 to 50 percent, maybe trying the situation right now.

10:20

Thai TV footage

Music

10:29

Lester:  The problem is so big and the violence so common, there's now a sense of national crisis, of the country's young in peril.

10:32

newsreader

10:40

And Thailand's government simply can't ignore it. So Prime Minister Chuan asked Burmese leaders to tour crop replacement projects on the old opium fields near Mae Sai.

10:42

Burmese politicians in garden

Lester:  The Golden Triangle giving away drugs to grow flowers. It's an absurd thought for critics who know Burma as one of the worst rogue drug-making countries. Many view Rangoon's annual drug burnings with scepticism, believing the military is tolerant, even supportive, of mobile chemical plants that make yaa baa, and the drug barons in Burma, Thailand and Laos that distribute it. Burma's leaders deny it, insisting they recently destroyed tens of millions of tablets.

11:03

Lester interviews Aung

Lester:  If you're working on eradication, sir, why the growth in amphetamines, and amphetamine production?

11:31

Super:

WIN AUNG

Foreign Minister, Burma

Aung:  Why? We are not supporting them, you know, we are not manufacturing them. We are even, you know, attacking all the problems at the grass roots.

Lester:  These are made in Burma, sir. These are made in Burma, these amphetamines.

Aung:  Do you think so? Are they n to made in here? You know, these factories can be made anywhere in the border area.

Border area village

Lester:  In fact it's not clear Burma's military even has the power to control drug production and export across these hills. Yaa baa, like heroin, is made in ethnic minority strongholds along Burma's borders. The producers protect their drug interests with their own armies. And if you doubt how well armed they are, ask Colonel Panurat.

12:00

Panurat:  He carry this gun.

12:22

Lester:  These are the weapons they're using against you?

Panurat:  Yes.

Lester:   He seized these weapons and 100,000 yaa baa pills several weeks before we met him in this border ambush on key members of a drug cartel.

12:26

Ambush

During the gun fight, the colonel shot dead two of the Burma amphetamine traffickers, but not before they blew up his car with a grenade.

12:39

Panurat: If we prepare everything - we have planning - I think we safe.

12:50

Lester:  Even although they're throwing grenades at you?

Panurat:  Mm, that time lucky.

Police raid village

Lester:   Colonel Panurat says he'd like to take on the drug armies, if only he could. But for the most part, those busted are small time dealers and users. As much victims as they criminals.

13:07

This man claims he's addicted because his bosses spiked drinking water with yaa baa to make the workers more productive.

13:21

User

User:  They mixed it in the water, and I didn't know... and I drank it.

Panurat:  Are you lying?

User:  I'm telling the truth.

13:29

Lester:  It's deeply frustrating for those on the front line of Thailand's fight against methamphetamines.

13:37

Panurat

Panurat:  He confess that he's the owner of this amphetamine.

13:44

Lester:  And what will happen to him, colonel, for owning that?

Panurat:  Like this, in jail.

Police with user, taking photos

Lester:  Colonel Panurat can get those with 30 or 40 pills, but factories making 50,000 pills a day are untouchable, across a border that leaks drugs, that stops law enforcement.

13:52

And often, for the ethnic minorities inside Burma, producing the twin evils is a matter of survival.

14:15

Beyrer

Super:

Dr. Chris BEYRER

Epidemiologist, John Hopkins Uni.

Beyrer:  There's a fundamental political resolution in Burma that's going to be necessary to start to deal with both the heroin problem and the amphetamine problem. I don't see that for any of these ethnic groups, unless there's some kind of real sustained development, that they're going to be able to get out of this industry.

School kids

Lester:   The longer that resolution takes, the greater the cost to Thailand in innocent lives wrecked by a drug that strikes in wild, random ways.

14:33

Yaa baa arrived in Hin Son on the morning train. A young man fell from a carriage as it pulled away from this country hamlet. Local school caretaker, Simma Sinphrom went to help the injured visitor.

14:45

Sinphrom hosing garden

Sinphrom:  He looked normal... but a little like a drunk man.  He kept talking... and said that he takes two amphetamines a day. He said that I was trying to take him to someone that would kill him.

15:00

Lumduan with child

Lumduan Sinphrom:  He said my husband wanted to kill him.

15:22

Train line

Lester:   Those who know yaa baa might have recognised the stranger as dangerous, might have known the couple's four year old, Sunthari, shouldn't have been near him.

15:27

Lumduan Sinphrom:  He suddenly walked toward my daughter. He had a knife, and held her neck.  He said "Don't come near me - or she dies."

15:38

Lester:  As police moved in, the yaa baa user went into a frenzy, waving his knife wildly.

15:45

An officer shot and killed him - in the seconds after he'd hacked the small girl to death.

15:54

Music

16:00

Sinphrom walking along train line

Lester:  A tragedy, one among many, reminding Thais that even the innocent aren't immune from the effects of the Crazy Drug.

16:03

FX:  Siren. Ends

16:18