Phumtham vows to ‘end’ drug smuggling across borders in 6 months

Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Phumtham Wechayachai on Sunday vowed to “end” cross-border drug smuggling in 14 provinces within six months.

He said the situation of drug influx across the border must be tangibly improved within the period.

Phumtham said he has been assigned to lead the efforts to fight drug trafficking, so he wanted to make his mission successful in six months.

He said he had consulted commanders-in-chief of the armed forces, the National Police chief, the Office of Narcotics Control Board, the Justice Ministry, and the Department of Special Investigation as well as military agencies concerned with drug suppression.

Phumtham said the military is normally in charge of sealing the border against drug smuggling across the border, but as the border is too long traffickers have been able to smuggle drugs in via natural trails.

He will call a meeting of 14 governors of border provinces and chiefs of 51 border districts as well as commanders of 76 police stations in the districts on January 20 on the efforts to end drug smuggling across the border.

“Within six months, the drug issue [in border provinces] must end. The situation must tangibly improve,” Phumtham said.

He said he would draft KPI guidelines for assessing performance of the commanders of the police stations in the border districts.

“If the situation does not improve clearly, the station chiefs will have to take responsibility,” Phumtham said.

He added that Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, Justice Minister Tawee Sondsong, the National Police chief the ONCB chief and representatives of the armed forces will also attend the meeting.

Phumtham vowed to end drug smuggling across the border after Pheu Thai Party’s patriarch, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, warned drug traffickers that the government would get serious on drug suppression from now on.

Thaksin said while campaigning for Pheu Thai candidate Pichai Lertpong-adisorn in the election for president of the Chiang Mai Provincial Administration Organisation that district chiefs would receive lists of drug traffickers to take action against them.

When asked whether the Paetongtarn government would use decisive measures to crack down on drug traffickers like the Thaksin administration did in 2003, Phumtham replied that the Thaksin government’s war on drugs was misunderstood and that decisive measures did not mean killings.

The Thaksin government’s war on drugs was launched in February 2003 when the government instructed police and local officials to treat drug offenders as “security threats” and deal with them ruthlessly. The war on drugs led to over 2,000 extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and blacklisting of suspects.

Phumtham argued that the killings during the war on drugs were carried out by drug bosses to prevent themselves from being implicated.

“The drug traffickers killed one another and some killed themselves. We didn’t want to see people killed because we have a justice process to deal with suspects,” Phumtham said.
He said decisive measures did not mean killings but it meant bringing traffickers to justice.

“I believe we’ll be decisive like the successful crackdowns during the Thaksin government. But we must be prudent in enforcing judicial measures to prevent the crackdown from escalating into an issue,” Phumtham said.

Phumtham said the prime minister had assigned him to head the operations and the drug suppression plan had nothing to do with Thaksin’s campaign speech in Chiang Mai.