Thailand proceeds with anti-drug campaigns

BANGKOK, February 1 (TNA) - Thai authorities are working hard to contain narcotics in the country, as agencies concerned in Udon Thani Province in the Northeast have signed in a joint declaration on concretely addressing drug problems by mid-2012. In a latest move, Department of Special Investigation (DSI) Deputy Director-General Police Colonel Yannapol Yangyuen led his subordinates, as well as Thai and US drug suppression officers to search a stone carving factory and a building in Mae Sai District of Chiang Rai Province in the Thai North early Wednesday morning and arrested a couple who are suspected to be major drug traffickers and whose assets have been then seized. The search did not find any illegal stuff, but the official team seized title deeds, passbooks and cash worth altogether over 30 million baht and have detained the couple who were found to have faced arrest warrants allegedly for possessing and trafficking heroin. The DSI deputy director-general acknowledged that both of the detained suspects had not cooperated with interrogators, but Thai authorities had monitored them for a long time and had enough evidence to prove that they were associates of drug trafficking gangs in Bangkok, as well as the ethnic Chin Ho and Wa groups in Myanmar, and that authorities are look into possible wrongdoing by their relatives. In Udon Thani, local authorities vowed to have concrete achievements in their joint anti-drug campaigns over the next six months or within June 26, which is the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) is, on the other hand, launching anti-drug campaigns in schools and rehabilitation courses for addicts, as reports have shown increasing drug addiction among youths aged under 15. Meanwhile, Thai Public Health Minister Wittaya Buranasiri urged his subordinates to urgently control narcotic precursors in the country, especially pseudoephedrine. (TNA)