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Justice Minister Wants to Reduce Rewards Paid for Drug Seizures
Thailand’s Justice Minister said Wednesday that rewards paid for drug seizures should also be lowered as prices have fallen for street drugs. Somsak Thepsuthin said It is costing drug traffickers less to make methamphetamine and crystal meth and prices have fallen. So the rewards paid for drug seizures should also be lowered
The Justice minister was speaking after a meeting with senior ministry officials. He instructed the Office of the Narcotics Control Board and other agencies involved to step up efforts to stem the spread of drugs. Particularly methamphetamine that’s been flooding into since easing of lockdowns.
The Bangkok Post reports that according to information received by the ministry, drug producers had increased their daily production, with lower overhead costs.
Reduction of reward money for Drug Seizures in Thailand
Formerly, a rotary pill press could produce 432,000 methamphetamine pills per day. Now, they were using a hydraulic system and could produce as many as 6,912,000 pills per day. Production costs for methamphetamine, had fallen to only 55-60 satang per pill, Mr Somsak said.
At the same time, the production cost of crystal meth, had also fallen from 50,000 baht to 26,000 baht per kilogram.
Therefore, the rewards paid to officials for drug seizures should also be lowered.
The reward paid for methamphetamine should be reduced from 2 baht to 50 satang per pill. For crystal meth, the reward should be reduced from 200 baht to 50 baht per kilogram.
Mr Somsak also said a proposal had been made to lower the rewards, but did not say when this would be effective.
Officials would get rewards from seized drug-related assets to offset the loss, he added.
Mr Somsak said drug suppression agencies had been told to keep a close watch for drug money being laundered. Above all through commodities or cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
The Department of Investigation had also been told to look into this.