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 You are in: Under Secretary for Political Affairs > Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs > Releases > Fact Sheets > 2003 

Counternarcotics and Law Enforcement Country Program: Thailand

Washington, DC
March 11, 2003

Problem

Decades of U.S.-assisted development and annual eradication campaigns have greatly reduced Thai opium production, but heroin produced elsewhere in Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle still transits Thailand for international markets including the United States. Thailand is a base of operations for brokers and financiers involved in international heroin trafficking and other criminal activities, including terrorism. Thailand’s criminal laws and justice system need substantial improvement to meet international commitments and respond to modern transnational crime. Thailand has a major domestic problem of methamphetamine addiction, which the Thai Government has described as a national crisis.

U.S. Counternarcotics Goals

  • Continue to eliminate poppy cultivation through eradication and development of viable economic alternatives for farmers;

  • Target major traffickers and their organizations, including where appropriate extradition through cooperative investigations;

  • Promote new or improved substantive and procedural criminal laws, procedures and practices to deal more effectively with drug trafficking, terrorism, money laundering and other transnational and organized crime;

  • Enhance drug awareness, prevention and treatment activities; and

  • Support Thailand’s role as a regional leader in international drug and crime control.
U.S. Programs

Thailand and the United States cooperate closely on international drug and crime control issues. The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) funds a diminishing but still significant range of drug and crime control assistance projects.

Narcotics law enforcement assistance is designed to improve the ability of drug law enforcement agencies to respond to illicit drug production and trafficking by providing commodities and training for the Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB), the Police Narcotics Suppression Bureau (PNSB), and other Thai institutions concerned with these activities.

In the past three years, a growing amount of assistance has been provided to the Office of the Attorney General and other institutions to promote development and implementation of new or improved substantive and procedural criminal laws and practices to fully implement Thai obligations under the UN Conventions against illicit drug trafficking and transnational organized crime. Assistance has included training, expert advice and limited commodity assistance, and a series of video conferences with U.S. experts.

Narcotics crop control funding is provided to the Royal Thai Army Third Region (3RTA), the ONCB, the Border Patrol Police (BPP), and provincial police to assist in surveying, locating, and eradicating illicit opium poppy crop in northern Thailand, and limited funding is provided to projects sponsored by the royal family to offer licit livelihood to farmers.

Demand reduction projects are designed to assist Thai authorities in improving and expanding demand reduction programs, to increase private sector and NGO involvement in the national drug abuse prevention and treatment effort, and to target specific drug abuse problem areas.

Regional project funding supports Thailand's efforts at coordination, outreach, and training for countries in the region. The U.S.-Thai International Law Enforcement Academy, which opened in 1999, provides training for law enforcement officers from numerous Asian countries to combat all forms of criminal activities. A major objective is to foster regional cooperation against transnational crime.


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