Asia's multibillion dollar methamphetamine cartels are using creative chemistry to outfox police
The shipping container raised suspicions as soon as it arrived in remote northwestern Laos last July.
Paperwork showed it was packed with 72 tons worth of blue
vats filled with propionyl chloride, a relatively obscure chemical, and bound
for an area in northern Myanmar notorious for the industrial-scale
manufacturing of synthetic drugs.
The cargo had been procured by a broker based in territory
controlled by the United Wa State Army, a militia that for years has been
accused of funding itself through drug sales.
But local authorities had not heard of propionyl chloride.
It is not one of the 30 precursor chemicals scheduled by the International
Narcotics Control Board (INCB) for use in manufacturing illicit narcotics or
psychotropic substances.
Nor had there been any apparent attempt to conceal the cargo
though the corrugated shipping container had taken an unusual route thousands
of miles around Asia, rather than overland through China.
The propionyl chloride departed China's coastal province of
Jiangsu, north of Shanghai, on a ship bound for the Thai port city of Laem
Chabang near Bangkok. From there, the chemicals were transported north by land
until they reached the Lao district of Huay Xai, just across the Mekong River
from Thailand.
Laotian authorities decided to call Jeremy Douglas for
advice. Douglas is the regional representative for the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and it's his job to help governments throughout East
Asia and the Pacific combat transnational criminal activity. In the lower
Mekong, that often means drug trafficking.
Douglas was astonished. He urged the Laotians to seize the
chemicals because he knew propionyl chloride can be used to make fentanyl, a
powerful and dangerous synthetic opioid that's ravaged the United States in
recent years, and ephedrine, a key ingredient in methamphetamine. Propionyl
chloride is not on the INCB list because it has plenty of legitimate uses, such
as the production of agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals. However, the
INCB recommends nations subject it to "special surveillance."
News of the seizure was kept under wraps until April this
year, when Douglas and Thai authorities presented it at a virtual drug conference
organized by the United Nations Global Drug Commission.
Laos authorities had stumbled upon a smoking gun, a major
piece of evidence that likely explained how the kingpins behind Asia's
multibillion-dollar synthetic drug industry had been outfoxing the Mekong's
security forces. They were employing ingenuous chemical engineering, using a
variety of unregulated chemicals, to make synthetic narcotics.
"These are very creative people," Douglas told the
UN conference.
"Fundamentally, they are innovators. They are problem
solvers."
The working theory
Authorities seized a record 175 tons of meth in 2020
throughout East Asia and Southeast Asia, a new record despite the Covid-19
pandemic, according to preliminary UNODC data. Drug prices continued to drop, meaning
these major busts are not materially affecting the overall supply of drugs in
the region.
But seizures of ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and
phenyl-2-propanone (P2P) -- the most common chemicals used to make meth --
basically dried up. Douglas said authorities only seized 600 kilograms of
ephedrine and 10 million tablets of pseudoephedrine, a "tiny amount"
compared to the level of meth nabbed by authorities.
That left experts with a puzzling question: How was the meth
being made?
If illicit drugs were being seized in record numbers,
authorities should have found a higher volume of the chemicals to make them,
too.
Experts floated the theory that cartels were importing
chemicals like propionyl chloride and employing world-class chemists to produce
their own ingredients to make meth -- like buying the flour to make a pie crust
instead of just purchasing a pre-made one.
The law enforcement community often calls these chemicals
"pre-precursors" or "non-scheduled-precursors." They are
made and sold legally but diverted for illicit use at some point in the supply
chain.
Some pre-precursors like propionyl chloride have legitimate
chemical uses besides illicit drug manufacturing. Other so-called
"designer precursors" are synthesized so they're chemically distinct
enough to avoid government oversight, but serve no known purpose other than
making narcotics.
Trying to regulate these chemicals often resembles a game of
whack-a-mole. By the time a government has gone through the bureaucratic or
legal process to regulate one, another new one has appeared.
However, despite the seemingly never ending flow of newly
developed pre-precursors, converting pre-precursors into the ingredients for
synthetic drugs is a technically complex process that involves expert
chemistry.
Douglas said his office knew various pre-precursors were
being confiscated across the Mekong, but the staggering volume of propionyl
chloride seized in Laos all but confirmed their suspicions that illicit
narcotics manufacturers were using this process.
"In a sense the seizure confirmed what we and others
had suspected and for the past few years: that pre-precursors are a playing a
major role in the regional drug trade," Douglas said.
"Organized crime are effectively working around
controls on traditional precursors."
To combat drug and precursor trafficking across their shared
borders, Thailand, China, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam launched a joint
intelligence sharing initiative in late 2019, named Golden Triangle Operation
1511.
The five countries hoped to "intensify
cooperation" to close down trafficking hotspots in the greater Mekong.
From December 2019 to December 2020, agents arrested more
than 16,000 people and seized nearly 450 million meth pills, more than 34,000
kilograms of crystal meth and more than 1 million kilograms of precursor
chemicals, Thai authorities said at the UN panel.
Authorities in the region see it as a success so far,
despite the operation being partly derailed by the pandemic.
"From our statistics, Operation 1511 has been able to
seize a lot," said Paisit Sangkahapong, the deputy secretary-general of
the Thai Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB).
"However, there are still some other precursor
chemicals that get through our checkpoints to the Golden Triangle area. This is
something we have to work on," Paisit said.
Pre-precursors are a global problem. Cornelis de Joncheere,
the president of the INCB called the increasing use of pre-precursors a
"critical challenge to the international drug control system" at the
UN-sponsored panel.
These issues are more acute in Asia because the illicit drug
production centers in the Golden Triangle operate next door to two of the
world's biggest chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturers, China and India,
offering ready access to licit chemicals that can be used for illicit means.
"The symbiotic relationship between the chemical and
synthetic drug businesses here in Asia is undeniable," said Douglas.
"The surge of meth took a surge of chemicals."
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