Harvesting Trees to Make Ecstasy Drug
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Harvesting Trees to Make Ecstasy Drug


By TOM BLICKMAN Tuesday, February 3, 2009


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The main production areas now are the Danai, Hpakant and Inndawgyi regions in Kachin State, and the Hkam Ti region in Sagaing Division. The oil is bought by Chinese traders.

According to a Kachin businessman, the Chinese market for thitkado oil is in Mangshi and Zhangkhong, a small border town north of Ruili and opposite of Mai Ja Yang. Most oil comes through Laiza, a border town controlled by the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), and some comes from Nawng Tau, a border town near Ruili where illegal timber logging moves across the border. The KIO prohibited thitkado production in the areas under its control in 2006. The wood had become scarce and producers had to go deep into the forest to find the remaining trees. Nevertheless, the KIO still gave permission to harvest trees occasionally.

Prices are increasing, say several sources. Until 2007, one litre could be sold for 60 yuan, but due to the increased shortage of trees, the price increased to 90 yuan in 2008, according to a trader in Ruili. Most people involved in the harvesting of trees are unaware of its commercial use. Some erroneously suspected that it was used for yama, or methamphetamine. One thought it was used to make an atomic bomb, indicating the level of secrecy surrounding the trade.

The main tree used nowadays, according to TNI researchers, is the Laukya Mwe, the Burmese name for the Schima wallichii or the Chinese guger tree or needle wood. Before it used to be the Payok pin, the Burmese name for the Cinnamomum camphora or Camphor tree. Another tree identified in Kachin State at the Chinese border is the Kum krung, very similar to Sassafras Tzumu, according to TNI researchers. Only the bark is used and sold in China. According to research in China, the bark of the Sassafras Tzumu has very high safrole content (97 percent).


A Better Way Forward

As noted, Safrole-rich oils are not only produced for the manufacturing of ecstasy, but are the raw materials for many legal products. Current safrole production is not meeting the market demand and the destructive extraction process raises serious concerns about the long-term availability of safrole. Preventing ecological damage and unsustainable harvesting of safrole-rich oils is urgently needed to preserve fragile ecosystems.

However, burning illicitly produced oils will not contribute to a long-term solution, and might even be counterproductive. It is yet another example of a simple-minded law enforcement approach that also has not been effective to reach a sustainable decline in illicit opium cultivation—as has been described in the recent report “Withdrawal Symptoms in the Golden Triangle: A Drug Market in Disarray.

Lessons learned from alternative development programs to counter the illicit cultivation of opium in the region have to be taken into account to design an effective policy.

Eradication of unsustainable safrole-rich oil production only makes sense when viable and sustainable alternatives are in place.

A more effective approach would be to involve all stakeholders: The people now implicated in the harvesting, who need to be educated on sustainable harvesting and distilling methods; the chemical industry, which needs to produce raw materials in a responsible, environmentally friendly way; academic institutes involved in developing alternative plants and harvesting methods; and development organizations to fund and design alternative development programs for environmentally friendly and sustainable production of safrole-rich oil. 

For more information: Withdrawal Symptoms in the Golden Triangle: A Drug Market in Disarray” By Tom Kramer, Martin Jelsma and Tom Blickman; Transnational Institute, January 2009. http://www.tni.org/reports/drugs/withdrawal.pdf

Tom Blickman is a researcher and journalist for Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute.



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