Meth’s role in Southeast Asia’s boom – The Diplomat

Like many teenagers around the world, Ngo started using drugs after being encouraged by his friends. But what separates his experiences in Cambodia from those of a teenager in many other countries is that his friends didn’t promise him a good time if he got close to them; rather, they promised it would help him make a profit.

Much has been written about the deeply troubling rise in drug use in Southeast Asia, particularly methamphetamine. When discussing this problem, NGOs and the media have generally focused on the same underlying issues that lead to drug abuse and addiction in the West, namely poverty, unemployment and social decay.

While these are certainly factors in Southeast Asia as well, one aspect that has been overlooked is that another factor driving young people in the region to use methamphetamine is not poverty, but the opposite: breakneck speed of the economic boom, where skyscrapers that sprout from the ground like rice shoots can often cast a long shadow over the people who build them.

Beneath the international acclaim for Southeast Asia’s steadily rising economic metrics, there is a dark side to what the World Economic Forum called “The Dawn of the Asian Century.”

The drugs “are necessary for work,” said Ngo, who did not give his last name. In a recent interview, the 22-year-old told The Diplomat that he had been working as a manual laborer since he was 15, when he got a job at a construction site.

He said that when he first arrived in the capital, Phnom Penh, he discovered that all his new co-workers at an aluminum factory were smoking methamphetamines in a crystallized form known as “ice.” They told him it would help him get through the long days.

The workshop provided custom-made aluminum furniture for the city’s restaurants and hotels. In a country where the hospitality sector is estimated to have an incredible annual growth rate of 13%, these types of facilities are in constant demand. Ngo was assembling furniture for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week.

“When I took it, I didn’t know tiredness,” he said of the drug.

Pi, a 20-year-old worker on the same street who also did not want to give his family name, reported that he had used amphetamines to cope with the body pains he suffers from his job as a truck loader. He told The Diplomat that he brings in hundreds of 20-kilo cases of beer a day. The beer industry in Cambodia is also experiencing a boom, with an estimated annual growth rate of 9%.

Two workers at an aluminum furniture workshop in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, September 29, 2024. (Photo by Josephine Sta Ana Baliling)

These are not isolated incidents. In 2016, a random check by Cambodian officials found that 80 percent of truck drivers used methamphetamines to stay awake and work longer hours.

Nor is this trend limited to Cambodia. According to academic and medical reports, it is common throughout Southeast Asia, which now produces a large proportion of the world’s amphetamine-type stimulants.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 190 tons of methamphetamines were seized in East and Southeast Asia in 2023, the largest amount ever recorded in a single year , and more than four times the amount seized a decade ago. . Most of this comes from Myanmar’s Shan State, where drug syndicates, many based in rebel-held regions, enjoy proximity to drug and precursor markets in China and Southeast Asia. As a result, the street price of meth has plummeted, making it affordable even for low-paid workers.

A study in Thailand found that 73.5% of farm workers in four regions admitted to using illicit drugs; the overwhelming drug of choice was methamphetamines. The researchers who conducted the interviews wrote that workers “use stimulant drugs to increase their productivity, which can give them more income.”

The practice of using methamphetamines has become so common that an Israeli government investigation found that Thai farm workers often smuggled them into the country when they arrived, believing it to be their key to outsmarting native workers. It has also become popular throughout Thai society, especially in the informal economy such as street vendors, but also includes university students who believe it will help them study better.

“So much of Thailand’s economy has been built on endless labor,” said Patrick Meehan, a researcher at the Transnational Institute who has been researching use and production in the region since 2018.

He said that in many industries where workers are paid by the hour or by the piece, they are incentivized to make ends meet by using methamphetamines as performance enhancers.

As an example, Meehan pointed to the jade pits in northern Myanmar, where workers have to sift through mined debris for pieces of jade and are paid based on how much they find. The workers keep only a small fraction of the value of the jade they collect, so they turn to methamphetamines to help them cope with the endless monotony and increase the amount of jade they are able to find.

Meehan’s research in Myanmar found that it was somewhat common for employers to give to their own employees yaba – “crazy medicine” in Thai: a pill containing methamphetamines mixed with caffeine to keep them going. Sometimes this was done without the employees knowing, by putting it in their food or telling them it was a “tonic”. In extreme cases, employers began deducting the price of drugs from workers’ paychecks once they had become dependent on them.

Meehan said there was a difference between users and addicts, with some people her organization interviewed reporting that they were able to manage their use and limit it to functioning, while others spiraled out of control .

The difference between addiction and use can be very important. A study in Indonesia found that among regular amphetamine users, only 7% of people showed signs of addiction and that the average Indonesian amphetamine user took the drug about six times a month. Many reported choosing their use carefully based on their workload.

Ngo, the Cambodian furniture maker, said he and his co-workers scraped together money to buy methamphetamine 2-3 times a week. He said that for several years, this system worked well for them.

“I felt like I could fly,” she said, “and I could work non-stop.”

But the power surge came with downsides. “I felt like a different person,” she said. “I’ve lost control of myself.” The positive effects lasted only a few hours, after which he felt lethargic and had trouble eating and sleeping, Ngo said. Sometimes I needed more to alleviate these effects. Then, the embarrassment began.

“Before it was like white paper. Now I’m like dirty paper,” she said, using a common Khmer expression to refer to her loss of innocence and virtue.

“There’s a lot of stigma,” Meehan said, adding that it made it difficult for many addicts to seek help when they feel like they can’t stop. He said this was “strange”, considering the drug is widely used.

A street vendor in Thailand can work more than 15 hours a day. (Photo by Shunsuke Miyatake)

The stigma of recreational drug use is part of the reason meth producers and dealers market it as a performance enhancer. Methamphetamines are sold online and through corner stores in many parts of Southeast Asia and are traded like any other product. By pushing their drugs as performance enhancers that can increase productivity and prosperity, drug makers are able to overcome some of the stigma associated with recreational drug use, Meehan said. Although they often know that there is a risk of addiction and health problems, their economic conditions, along with commercialization, make them consider drug abuse as a legitimate economic decision.

“Drug use makes sense to them,” Gideon Lasco, a medical anthropologist at the University of the Philippines who specializes in drug problems, said in an email.

In his research, Lasco spent time interviewing young people who worked in ports in the Philippines. He found that methamphetamine use was common among them and that they seemed well aware of the risks and benefits associated with the drug, actively choosing to use it to increase their productivity. They even referred to it as “Pampagilas” or “skill enhancer”.

“Trapped in an informal economy that forces them to perform in order to survive, drug use plays a crucial role in their lives, a situation shared by many marginalized youth around the world,” Lasco wrote in a 2014 article.

Similar to the case of Thai migrant workers abroad, Southeast Asian borders do not contain the cultural connection to drugs. A report from Spain estimated that 98 percent of meth users in the country were Filipinos, who said they needed it to work long hours in kitchens and aboard ships.

However, he also pointed out to The Diplomat that “there is no singular reason” why people use drugs, and that other factors were often at play, including social pressures and escape, and that economic benefits they were only a contributing factor. Lasco added that meth’s odorless and cheap nature made it an attractive recreational drug for many.

The widespread use of methamphetamines in Southeast Asian labor sectors reveals a troubling underside of the region’s rapid economic growth. Marketed as a productivity tool, meth has ensnared countless workers, turning their work into an endurance race with devastating personal costs. From truckers in Cambodia to jade miners in Myanmar, the narrative is consistent: economic pressures push individuals toward drugs as a means of survival. The staggering rates of use, hidden behind shiny metrics of economic success, pose a significant challenge to public health, labor rights and the future stability of Southeast Asia’s workforce.

As this crisis continues to unfold, it is clear that addressing this unique drug epidemic has factors that set it apart from other drug epidemics, such as America’s opioid crisis. While the opioid crisis focuses on those without stable employment, the meth crisis in Southeast Asia has strong links to employment and the nature of labor rights. Addressing this growing problem requires a reassessment of the economic conditions that make drug use a rational, if destructive, choice for many.