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Yaba, New Form of Meth, Now Appearing In U.S.

California is experiencing a new form of methamphetamine use. Most methamphetamine is either injected with needles, snorted or smoked. The new form is taken orally and comes in the form of a tablet small enough to fit in the end of a drinking straw.

The tablets, often called by their Thai name, yaba, are a mixture of methamphetamine and caffeine and are popular throughout much of Southeast and East Asia. Yaba use in the United States is too new to yield much information about distribution patterns, but it appears that it is confined mostly to the Asian communities in the northern California and Los Angeles areas.

Among users, there is a perception that tablets are safer. Tablet users avoid the possibility of contracting AIDS or hepatitis by sharing needles, and they don't have needle marks running up and down their arms. On the other hand, tablets don't bring users a "rush," the brief, intense sensation experienced by those who inject or snort methamphetamine.

In the United States, methamphetamine tablets are commonly reddish-orange or green and have a variety of logos, with "WY" the most common.

Southeast Asian methamphetamine tablets are produced by large drug trafficking organizations in Burma. The United Wa State Army, a former insurgent group and Burma's largest heroin trafficking organization, is the preeminent producer of methamphetamine tablets in Southeast Asia. Its primary market is neighboring Thailand.

Southeast Asian traffickers, mainly Thai or Lao nationals, and U.S. citizens or resident aliens whose families have emigrated from those countries, dominate the trafficking or methamphetamine tablets in the United States.

The tablets are sent from Southeast Asia most often through the mail, although some quantities are shipped by courier, air, or maritime cargo. Most of the tablets seized in the United States arrived through the international mail system.

Although it is currently believed that Southeast Asian methamphetamine pills are brought to the United States primarily for sale to the Asian community, demand may expand to other communities. There are indications that methamphetamine tablets are becoming more popular within the "rave" party scene, given the similar appearance to other tablet form "club" drugs, such as Ecstasy.

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