March 8, 2010
BANGKOK (AFP) - Thai police arrested two men and a woman in northern Thailand Sunday found with 300,000 stimulant pills worth nearly one million US dollars.
Officers followed the trio for several days as they travelled to Chiang Mai province, where they detained the group and found the amphetamine pills in boxes in a truck, thought to be destined for Bangkok.
Police estimated the street value of the drugs to be 919 million dollars.
The suspects from the ethnic minority Hmong group were charged with drugs possession.
Drugs trafficking officially carries the death penalty although executions are rare.
Amphetamine-type stimulants are now the leading drugs in terms of use in Southeast Asia, according to a report late last year from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
