According to residents from the townships of Kyaikmaraw and Mudon in Mon State, amphetamine usage has proliferated in villages throughout both townships.
An eyewitness from Damatha village in Kyaikmaraw Township informed IMNA that from what he observes, amphetamine users in his village are typically youths, high school students, university students, and recently-graduated returnees from overseas universities; this source also noted a few cases of married adults in the village purchasing and using the drug.
“The students and young people who come back from other countries use the drugs [amphetamines]. They gather in small groups of 3 or 4 people to use the drugs, usually during the evening time,” this Damatha villager said.
“Now in our village, more than 100 young people use the drugs [amphetamines], young people from other villages also use it, some of children [from Damatha] buy it from other villages, I saw them dealing the drugs” he added.
According to this eyewitness in Damatha village, increasing drug use in the area is already causing strife that hints at future drug-related violence.
“Now there are problems between the parents and the children because of the drugs. Some children need money from their parents to buy drugs, but if their parents don’t give money to them they become unruly. The situation will become worse if the young people continue to use the drugs, we know this,” he told IMNA.
Amphetamine use among young people is also escalating in Mudon Township, a concerned parent from Kalort-tort village in Mudon told IMNA. This parent added that many concerned parents in Mudon Township are forcing their young-adult children to withdraw from their universities; these parents fear that university environments will encourage amphetamine usage in their children. “It is very easy to buy drugs, you can buy them as easily as candy or beans,” claimed an anonymous drug user from Mudon Township to IMNA; this individual currently attends Moulmein University.
According to IMNA’s source in Damatha village in Kyaikmaraw Township, village militia and village headmen in both his own village and throughout those in the surrounding area have been remarkably unresponsive to the increasingly blatant amphetamine use by the area’s youth. He informed IMNA that this passivity is due to reports about drug’s sources; rumors are circulating that amphetamines in Mudon and Kyiakmayaw Township are being trafficked to the area by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) and the Karen Peace Force (KPF), the two Burmese government-aligned groups that control the region, as an extra source of funds.
According to IMNA’s Damatha-based source, local village headmen in the area fear interfering in drug sales and usage in the area, because such actions might invite repercussions from the two groups.
This information has been corroborated by source from Moulmein University, who informed IMNA that the DKBF and the KPF supposedly traffic amphetamines from the city of Mae Sot, on the Thailand-Burma border; these groups reportedly are able to traffic large quantities of the drugs due to their alliance with the Burmese government, which allows them to bypass police searches and drug checkpoints. The amphetamines are then ferried into Burma, where their vast quantities allow them to be sold at low prices.
According to a former university student from Moulmein “Most amphetamines come from the [Thai-Burma] border. It is easy to get them around the school. They cost 3,500 kyat to 6,000 kyat per pill, the price is different depending on quality.”
According to a report released in September 2008 by the Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM), disputes over the source of the vast quantities of amphetamines streaming into Mon State have become a major source of contention in the area, with Karen ceasefire groups, Mon smugglers, and Burmese officials all being implicated.
