Chopsticks...

Until 1997, ya ba was a drug for poor men: long-distance truckers and taxi drivers depended on the powerful methamphetamine (meth) to keep them awake and alert. That changed suddenly, when young people making the club scene in Asia discovered the "jolt" ya ba delivers could keep all night dance parties called "raves" going way past the midnight hour.

In two years, Burmese suppliers had flooded the markets in Thailand and Laos with ya ba, and it wasn't long before the drug began to make its way across the Pacific, bound for West Coast communities in the U.S.

In 2000, ya ba appeared in California's Asian immigrant communities, a niche market for the drug as well as for a wide assortment of other criminal activities, clandestine gambling and forced prostitution, for example. While ya ba has not yet replaced Ecstasy as the drug of choice for club-goers in places like Sacramento, the tiny, candy-flavored pills are slowly seeping into a secondary market. Some distributors even appear to be passing ya ba off as Ecstasy at local raves. The deception is an easy one, given the gullibility of their customers and a culture clearly in tune with Mae West's famous observation that, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful."

nuts...

Bad things in small packages
Ya ba delivers a long-lasting - 10 hour - high, and the fact that the pills are no bigger than a pencil eraser is a significant selling point: Ya ba can be stashed inside a cigarette - most users smoke it - or it can just as easily be concealed in a hem or hidden in a waistband. One pill generally weighs just under 1/10 of a gram, and typically contains 15-35 milligrams of meth.

For the Drug Enforcement Administration, five milligrams of methamphetamine constitute a single dose. By that standard, ya ba, which may contain three to five times that amount of meth in a package small enough to fit under a cigarette filter, may be one of the most desirable highs on the market.

music CDs...

One ya ba pill sells for about $1.25 in Thailand, where authorities continue to struggle with what has become a major threat to the nation's health and security. In the U.S., pills average between $10-$20, depending on supply. It's a price consumers seem more than willing to pay.

In the last months, hundreds of thousands of the little pills have found their way into cities like Sacramento, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In the last two years, Customs inspectors at mail facilities in Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Honolulu have seized roughly 150 shipments of ya ba, about 240,000 pills, destined for addresses in the Sacramento area.

and clothing.

Agents and inspectors in Sacramento come down hard
On August 19, Customs agents and inspectors in Sacramento struck it big, making what all agree is the first significant, single U.S. bust involving ya ba. Special Agent Dan Lane, RAIC, Sacramento, and his team arrested 10 suspects, all originally from Laos, who are awaiting trial on federal drug conspiracy charges. Lane says his team seized grape and vanilla-flavored pills tainted with d-methamphetamine and caffeine, a powerful, dangerous combination.

Photo Credit: Office of Field Operations

Ya ba is smuggled using a variety of techniques, including dead insects...

News of the August 19 seizure may not have made the rounds yet - Lane says smugglers are stuffing ya ba into CD cases, chopsticks, and even dead insects - but as more and more ya ba traffickers and distributors head off to the federal courts, chances are that, for some, mounting penalties and prison time may turn the "medicine which makes crazy" into a very sobering experience.