Crystal Meth: A Global Pandemic (Addicted: The Synthetic Curse)

Introduction

CNA traverses the front lines of various countries to investigate the world of illicit substances in Addicted. This three-part documentary series offers a rare, unfiltered look at the global production, trafficking and consumption of traditional and synthetic drugs.

In this first episode, Curse Of Crystal Meth: Addiction, Trafficking & Dangerous Production Exposed, they explore the far-reaching impact of this synthetic curse. From Pakistan, to Thailand, to Canada, to Australia: methamphetamine, or ice, is ruining communities.

Episode 2: Destructive Cocaine And Fentanyl: Unraveling The Harrowing Impact On Lives
Episode 3:

Quotes

Karachi, Pakistan

“Pakistan is home to 6.5 million drug users who consume 59 metric tonnes of heroin, ice and cannabis. One gram of crystal meth costs around 200 Pakistani Rupees or USD 0.7 in the streets of Karachi.”

“We are in the proximity of Afghanistan. Taliban has carried out a crackdown but they do it selectively because that is a major source of income. The southern route, which they call Helmand, leads to the international markets. Meth is easy to produce. Pakistan has been a trafficking route but subsequently it has also become the victims of this menace over the years. We must focus on rehab. We need to help those people. We need to treat them as patients. In Pakistan, we have six proper rehab centres which are presently working.”

“[Sunshine Rehabilitation Welfare Center (SRWC)] Our treatment is carried out without the use of medicine. We harness their willpower to keep them going through the detox phase. No medicine is given. Only the general physician’s medicine is provided to them.”

“If we just talk about Karachi alone, there are hundreds of thousands of people using drugs but only 10,000 or 20,000 addicts go into rehab in a month. In that same month, 50,000 to 100,000 new people are getting addicted to drugs.”

Saraburi, Thailand

“One survey estimates 3 million people or 4.6% of Thailand’s population are synthetic drug users. Over 95% of addicts are between 15-59 years old – the prime working age. The Wat Thamkrabok Temple is battling against drug addiction with its ancient Buddhist methods.”

“The first give days are a battle against the lingering toxins in their body and against their memories and emotions. This is Hua Ya Bamrung, essential for detoxification and recovery. Once consumed, it induces nausea and vomiting to cleanse the body of toxins. As drugs are consumed, alkaloids and other toxins accumulate in the body. This process helps flush them out daily. It’s taken once a day for the first five days to help flush out residual drugs.”

Chiang Mai Border, Thailand

“Millions of meth pills produced in super labs in Myanmar’s Shan and Kachin States are being trafficking into northern Thailand. The Pha Muang Task Force is a defence force that patrols a 930-kilometre-long border to stop this infiltration.”

“Drug smuggling in our jurisdiction is closely tied to armed ethnic groups nearby. The instability in these regions fuels the illicit drug trade, with certain groups using drug profits to strengthen their influence, acquiring weapons and consolidating power in their territories. We coordinate with Myanmar’s military along the border. We also conduct joint patrols on land and waterways.

United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime, Thailand

“The region is now seizing more synthetic drugs than ever before and looking at it purely economically, it’s much easier to produce synthetic drugs for criminal groups interested in drug production. You don’t need a farmer, you don’t need a field. What you need is basically a place where you can set up a laboratory. The basic infrastructure for a laboratory: a good chemist that runs the laboratory, some protection from law enforcement and others that might be interested in this, and access to chemicals. And all of these things were abundantly available in Myanmar.”

“Drug cartels in Myanmar routinely change precursor chemicals in order to avoid detection at border checkpoints across Thailand. Chemicals used in drug production are imported from neighbouring countries, including China and Myanmar. Once brought in, meth will be transported to the central part before spreading for domestic use or re-exported to third countries, like Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand.”

“Methamphetamine and ice are stimulant drugs – they stimulant the central nervous system. After that, if it is used frequently, the central nervous system will be destroyed. It causes neurological symptoms, such as hallucinations or mania.”

Samut Prakan, Thailand

“Synthetic drugs confiscated by the military are burnt every year in front of a live audience.”

“The main objective for today’s event is to ensure transparency, to give people confidence and assurance that, when law enforcement officers seize and intercept drugs along the border, 100% are destroyed.”

Downtown Vancouver, Canada

“Nearly 50,000 people across Canada died from drug overdose from 2016 to 2024. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin, accounted or 49,105 deaths. To reverse drug overdose deaths, British Columbia was granted a three-year drug decriminalization period by the Federal Government.”

“In 2023, January 31st, they began a pilot to decriminalize hard drugs, so that meant that people on the street could possess hard drugs – cocaine fentanyl, heroin, crystal meth – and it took the police’s powers away to enforce any kind of drug possession laws. What ended up happening is that a significant number of people taking those drugs they were actually using them as a currency on the street and trading them for deadly fentanyl anyway.”

“Only 11 months ago … the former Minister of Mental Health and Addiction said there was, no evidence to support a widespread diversion of safe supply drug … The government repeatedly and continues to gaslight the public, even as there is mounting evidence that taxpayer funded drugs were being used as a currency to purchase deadly fentanyl, enriching gangs and criminals who make and sell fentanyl, trafficked here in our province and outside the borders of our province.”

“This is about ensuring that people get access to the supports, the services, the medication that they need to separate them from the toxic street drug supply and ensure that the medication they’re getting is helping them move through the system into treatment and recovery. We’re going to continue to work with the RCMP with police on these investigations.”

Hatzic Valley, Rural British Columbia

“A lot of these labs will involve extreme acids. If the public only knew [about] some of these chemicals, with how toxic they are and what they’re putting in their bodies, some days it’s shocking to me. When we deal with these labs, we’re talking millions of doses that could be going out to our streets. For a normal person that doesn’t have a tolerance to it, 2 milligrams is more than enough to kill them.”

“These deaths and the addiction caused by these high potency drugs affect communities of families across the country and it’s hard to find anybody in B.C. that doesn’t have a friend or relative that has been impacted by these drugs.”

“Over the last 25 years, organized criminals have seen Vancouver and B.C. and Canada as a whole as a safe place to do business. We don’t really have laws that make it easy to go after the highest levels of organized crime and we also have become an exporting nation, where methamphetamine and fentanyl, that’s either smuggled into Canada or produced here, is being exported internationally and causing havoc in other countries.”

Perth, Australia

“We have one of the highest prices, retail prices, for methamphetamine of any elicit market in the world. Meth would be wholesaling at around $160,000 a kilo in Western Australia and retailing at about $1,000 a gram, so a million dollars a kilo. If we extrapolate that out at 18 kilos, that’s an $18 million a week business or a $900 million a year business.”

“The ACIC’s National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program is powerful because it provides our partners with long-term trend information about the consumption by Australians that brings together an evidence base for supply, harm, and demand reduction. The data shows us, for example, that methylamphetamine consumption in regional and rural locations is very high.”

Bunbury, Rural Australia

“The impact of homelessness, as we know across Australia, is chronic. If a accepts the fact that they want to rehabilitate, if they want to not lapse and relapse, you need the family support. But the tragedy is that so many times, those bridges with the family have been burnt. So we [Doors Wide Open] are where they go.”

Sydney, Australia

“[DANNY SHANNON, ACTIVIST] It’s been 15 years in recovery. Today, my job as a man in recovery, and also just a human being, is to try and carry a message of love and hope to anyone out there struggling.”

“In 2013, 5 weeks apart, I lost my parents when I was 19. I went to a friend’s house and they had ice. They explained to me what it was and I really didn’t care at that point and literally after the first time I got addicted to using it and I was addicted for 4 years, and I’ve had relapses over the years. I’m now 21 months clean and I just want to say literally not even once.”