US$395 million of drugs to be torched in Thailand
More than 6,300 kilos of drugs to be burned on Monday to commemorate the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking
By Chanon Viravan
The door of the narcotic treasury room at Thailand’s Food and Drug Administration office is made of heavy steel with a combination lock, like the ones used to store valuables at a bank deposit room.
Wachira Umphon, director of the Substance Control Division is one of the few people with the authority and the password to open it.
Inside the room are hundreds of ordinary cardboard boxes. He opened one to reveal pricey but prohibitive items. Inside the boxes are drugs such as crystal meth and heroin.
On the street, a small package of these drugs can fetch thousands of baht, he said. The entire contents are 6,322 kilogrammes of confiscated drugs worth 13 billion baht (US$395 million).
