[LINK] "Drug addiction grows on Thai rubber farms"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Jazeera's Lizzie Presser and Fabian Drahmoune report on the spread of crystal meth addiction in Thailand, as poor workers depend on it to remain active. I'm doubly alarmed: health issues aside, can an economy that depends on this level of suffering and its associated polity actually last?

Cap started taking meth regularly when he was 13-years old.

His father needed help on the family's rubber fields, so Cap pitched in from 1am to 4am, cutting back the bark of rubber trees and collecting the valuable milky-white fluid.

"It's hard work, and taking yaba helped," said the 16-year-old rubber farmer at Wang Saphung Hospital's drug treatment facility, who asked to be identified only by his nickname, Cap. "I just didn't feel tired any more."

Called "yaba", or "crazy medicine", the energy-inducing drug is pouring in from Myanmar and sweeping through the countryside, attracting farmers who are under pressure to work longer hours and harvest at faster speeds.

Cap's school started at 8am, so he began to rely on meth to stay awake through the long days.

"After a little while, I stopped going to school every day. I just didn't have the will or the strength," Cap said, adding most rubber farmers in his area were also using the drug. "I could only go to school when I had taken yaba."

In the rice-growing region of northeast Thailand, farmers are rarely just rice farmers any more. Many also pick up odd construction jobs, grow corn in the evening, tap rubber overnight, and run their own side businesses.