For most of the last 10 years, CREA rehabilitation centre in Mohammadpur was filled with heroin addicts. Some 80% of patients were hardened users, with the odd Phensydyl fiend thrown in. “Then,” says Tarun Kanti Gayen, the centre’s director and clinical psychologist, “things started to change; now 60-70% of our patients are Yaba addicts.”
Yabas are small pink pills, whose active ingredient is methamphetamine, an extremely potent stimulant that can see users stay awake for days. The vast majority of Yaba pills are produced in laboratories in northern Myanmar. Here, powerful private armies exist in semi autonomous zones in peripheral areas of the country.
According to a recent article in Jane’s Intelligence Review, a respected journal for the defence and intelligence sector, “The trafficking organisation inside Myanmar is deliberately providing a promotional rate for exports to Bangladesh.” This has seen interdiction rates by law enforcers go from some 36,000 pills in 2008 to two million in 2012.
Prices for Yaba in Yangon, the commercial capital of the country, are more expensive than Dhaka. Dhaka prices are, however, over 10 times that of prices in MaungDaw, the border town just over the river from Teknaf. Here, a single pill can retail for around Tk20. By the time they reach the capital, a good pill retails for around Tk500.
There are several reasons for this. Tarun says: “It’s not a need that was created in the society; it was something that was created by international drug cartels. It was their design, their thing, they designed the drugs to be like this and that’s what is happening.”
Tarique is a patient at CREA. He is only 24 but has been taking Yaba for 10 years. As an adolescent, he was taken by the euphoria, the energy and the sweet smelling vapours these pills give off. However, after several years of continual use, in which he would stay awake for three or four days at a time, he started dealing to fund his habit.
“I was a dealer myself. Once people become addicted they have to, because it’s so easy to get access to it, and the bigger dealers will give you Yaba pills for free.” He would then sell them on to his friends. “To be honest with you, I only have one clean friend now.”
According to Tarun, not only has the numbers of Yaba addicts increased in his centre, but so has the incidence of mental illness. “Now 64% of our clients have psychiatric problems; that means they have drug problems and psychiatric problems induced by Yaba.”
This is compared with some 10% of his clients who are in for heroin use.It is widely acknowledged that Myanmar is Asia’s largest exporter of Yaba and methamphetamine, the active ingredient in Yaba/Meth is also consumed on its own, when it is sometimes known as “ice,” the form it is commonly consumed as in the West, (made famous by TV show “Breaking Bad”).
The resurgence of Yaba has replaced the traditional manufacture and export of heroin, says Bertil Lintner, author of “Merchants of Madness,” the seminal work on the subject. “Unlike heroin, it requires very little investment (no fancy equipment or skilled, and therefore expensive, chemists are needed) for quick returns (the main market is in the region), and it’s a synthetic drug, so it’s not dependent on a notoriously unreliable crop like the opium poppy, which has to be grown and harvested to make heroin,” he explains.
Thus, the market in Bangladesh was flooded with Yaba shortly after Thailand, the most popular export destination for Yaba, declared a war on drugs in 2003, in which some 2,500 alleged dealers or users were reportedly killed extrajudicially. The Burmese producers of Yaba are believed to have corrupt business dealings with their central government, or as Jane’s puts it, it’s narcotic “business opportunities implicit in the agreement” between rebel armies and the government.
Tarique’s honeymoon with Yaba lasted for about four years. “Then I took Tk300,000 that was meant for my exams registration and spent that on Yaba, and then I ran away from home. That’s when my parents knew I was into Yaba,” Tarique says. “I spent the money in seven days; it’s a lot of money.”
He says his initial years were filled with gregarious chatting brought on by the stimulants. He would stay awake for days, socialising and “roaming around with friends.” However, soon he started experiencing paranoia. “After a while, it changed me; it changed my mentality. After having it, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I was all alone. I was freaking out, because even a little pin drop of sound … I mean paranoia. Pretty crazy; I mean, a lot.”
Our Narco-desh
Imported, synthetic drugs only became prevalent in Bangladesh in the late 1980s, when Ershad banned the use of Marijuana. “Ganja was restricted from the 80s under the military rule of Ershad. After that we saw a rise in use of hard drugs, so maybe there is a correlation,” Tarun says. Initially, this saw widespread availability of heroin.
However, Yaba is fast competing in the market. Its image is still one of higher class. It’s more sociable and acceptable. It is less associated with the slums and sunken eyes. What’s more, it smells like chocolate, which Tarique acknowledges is a draw for a 14-year-old.
“Still today, in Bangladesh, heroin is a low-collar drug; it’s not for the white collars. But Yaba is white collar, so those who take Yaba are of higher class, because its expensive and you can use it anywhere – at the work place, at your home – because it’s still very easy to use and it is used by students, executives,” Tarun says. Note that it fits in better with a “hi-tech” aspirational society, which Bangladesh, like many Asian societies, is becoming.
Corruption nexus
Tarique’s dealer, however, was a man with connections in Teknaf; he was not a user, just a business man, “to survive.” He was not a “white collar.” Reflecting this class divide, a teacher at a private university says because “higher class” students will not talk to “lower class” people, a member of a higher class group of friends will be recruited to distribute narcotics.
Tarique believes his dealer also set him up with the connivance of the police. “Even the police are into Yaba these days.” He says, whilst meeting his dealer one day, the police showed up and arrested him with 700 pills he had just taken off his dealer. He was carted off in chains, while his dealer was released. “Even hell is better than prison,” Tarique recalls. He was incarcerated with lifers – those whose crimes included murder and rape-who, he says, would threaten other inmates with sexual abuse and violence. “I cried all the time.”
Tarique was lucky; with influential parents he was out after three weeks. However, many are not so lucky, and the government, it seems, is out of ideas.“We have seen that the war on drugs strategy has failed the US government completely. If the US cannot do that, how can our government do that?” Tarun says.
With the explosion of Yaba, it is clear that efforts to restrict drugs here have failed. The Bangladesh government may want to heed the lessons of South America, where billions of dollars have been spent on a war that was effectively lost. Prohibition can be said to have failed elsewhere as well. Bangladesh may want to consider alternative routes, now that the little pink pill is firmly on our doorstep.
