Welcome to HaRDstories 2.0
In the hills above Kong Pak Ping village, with Myanmar in the distance, lies the cemetery where Chaiyaphum Pasae, a Lahu youth activist shot dead by soldiers in 2017, was buried. Photo: Luke Duggleby/HaRDstories
Cheap drugs from Myanmar are flooding Thailand’s Lahu communities, where poverty and decades of neglect have left young people easy targets for the drug trade. Now some are pushing back – through traditional ceremonies, a grassroots charity and, for the first time, a law that recognises their rights.
Sitthikorn (surname withheld for protection), 19, said he began experimenting with substances shortly after he dropped out of primary school, starting with cigarettes before moving on to marijuana and kratom. But it was his mother who put him to work as a drug mule.
“My mother just ordered me to deliver amphetamine tablets to customers. I had no money back then. I did it for five or six months,” said Sitthikorn, who belongs to an indigenous group called the Lahu. “I picked up the drugs and delivered them to the customers. I gave all the money to my mother and she let me keep some of it.”
Sitthikorn’s experience is far from unique in Thailand’s northern region, a major gateway in the global narcotics trade that links manufacturers in Myanmar with buyers worldwide.
Driven by the conflict in Myanmar and global demand, the trade is drawing in new victims as foot soldiers – casual users, local dealers and transnational traffickers alike – at a pace that alarms watchdog groups and officials alike.
While the spread of drugs affects all communities in the region, campaigners say the impact is especially severe for Lahu communities along the frontier. Entrenched poverty, discrimination and, for some living close to the border, an uncertain legal status have made them easy targets for the narcotics trade, according to rights groups and Lahu people interviewed by HaRDstories.
Amid this struggle, some within the Lahu community have sought to fight back. Some village elders have turned to ancient healing rituals to treat addiction; a married couple has quietly built a refuge for the community’s most vulnerable young people; and a landmark law on indigenous rights, passed after decades of advocacy, offers a more systemic hope – that equal access to land, education and welfare might one day remove the conditions that make the drug trade so hard to escape.
Tripled in five years
An estimated 225,000 Lahu people live along the border regions of Myanmar and Thailand; most reside in Myanmar’s Shan state, while about a third, some 116,000, are in Thailand.
Many Lahu settlements are located in or near the Golden Triangle, where the borders of the two countries meet Laos, once the world’s largest opium hub during the wars that raged across Indochina in the 1960s and 70s. Opium cultivation was once widespread among Lahu communities in Thailand, though the practice was later stamped out by the central government through stricter enforcement and alternative crop programmes.
But the spectre of drugs has returned to haunt Lahu villages in recent years, as the northern region has once again become a busy corridor for drug trafficking. Research shows that narcotics use in the region has tripled in five years, driven in part by the ready availability of methamphetamine tablets. Opium cultivation in neighbouring Myanmar has also reached its highest level in a decade, with about a third of it concentrated in the eastern Shan state — just across the border.
Video by Pitcha Dangprasith/AFP. Edited by Nicolas Axelrod for HaRDstories.
“The drug problem is not only a global and national problem, it also affects local communities,” said Sila Jahae, chairman of the Society for a Better Quality of Life for the Lahu, an advocacy group that campaigns on human rights and other local issues.
Sila said entrenched poverty, combined with limited access to land, employment and education, was driving many Lahu people toward the drug trade, whether as users or low-level dealers and smugglers. Rural Lahu also often do not speak Thai fluently, further cutting them off from the job market and government services, he added.
“They have no land to farm. They don’t know the language. They have no education. In the end, they can’t do anything except get involved in the drug business,” Sila said.
Researchers at Mae Fah Luang University note that a large proportion of Lahu families live below the national poverty line of 2,500 baht (76 USD) per month. In a study of Lahu villages in Chiang Rai, they found that language barriers vary sharply by generation: younger Lahu who attended school generally speak Thai, while nearly all of those over 60 were illiterate.
Sila’s assessment is echoed by Watcharapong Phumchuen, a researcher who studies substance abuse trends among indigenous communities in northern Thailand, including the Lahu.
“The most important lesson from my work is that wherever inequality is present, drug problems become more entrenched and more severe,” Watcharapong said. “It’s true that some Lahu people seek power and money through illegal means. Their communities have become part of the drug cycle. Some have been drawn in by the lure of money and the power it brings, which leads them to make bad choices.”
When rehab is out of reach
Although the Thai government’s approach to drug abuse has shifted in favour of rehabilitation in recent years, experts and representatives of Lahu communities say users typically lack access to such programmes. Lahu living in remote border areas do not hold Thai citizenship – a requirement for many welfare services.
Language poses an additional obstacle, particularly for older Lahu and recent arrivals from Myanmar, deterring many from seeking rehabilitation even when programmes are available.
Instead, a growing number of Lahu people struggling with addiction have turned to a local alternative in Chiang Mai’s Mae Ai district, where a shaman performs rituals designed to treat addiction through a combination of folk medicine, traditional belief and communal support.
Jawa Jabo, a 70-year-old farmer, said he had recently relapsed into opium use under the weight of gruelling work on his farm and marital problems. Urged by those around him, and driven by guilt over having offended the Supreme God of his faith, Jawa eventually submitted himself to the drug cleansing ceremony.
“I want to restore my faith in God. I don’t want to get involved with any bad things anymore,” Jawa said. “From this day onward, I must quit opium for good.”
The rites took place at a shrine in Mae Raeng village. Jawa began by making offerings in contrition to the Lahu’s Supreme God and visiting local elders to ask for their forgiveness. He then returned to the shrine, where the healer cupped his hands over a candle before gripping Jawa’s legs and body to drive out the intoxicants.
“I ask forgiveness from the rivers and mountains. May all the bad things dissolve in the rivers and never return,” chanted Chaha Satae, the faith leader presiding over the ceremony.
Chaha said the rites were meant to strengthen the bonds between former addicts and their communities: apologies are tendered to neighbours, while family members are invited to pray together and share meals with the penitents at the shrine.
“My aim is to help them stay within their communities and their families – not to lock them up – but to treat them with love from their families and guidance from God,” Chaha said.
Twenty baht a tablet
On a foggy winter morning in Chiang Rai province, army captain Khetsopon Nopsiri led his patrol through forests along the Thai-Myanmar border in search of drug traffickers. Skirmishes are common; in November alone, his unit was involved in four firefights, including one that sent suspected smugglers fleeing and left behind bundles containing 2.2 million methamphetamine tablets.
“Drug trafficking into Thailand is increasing as production becomes more efficient,” Captain Khetsopon said.
Multiple international observers have documented a rise in drug production and trafficking from Myanmar, where a civil war and military crackdowns have left parts of the country mired in violence and lawlessness since the army seized power in 2021.
Although armed organisations in Myanmar, including its own military, have long been accused of profiting from the drug trade, some factions are said to have turned increasingly to the illicit industry since the coup to fund their operations, whether by cultivating opium or running methamphetamine laboratories deep in the forests, virtually undisturbed by law enforcement.
“The first victims are the communities living along the border,” said Delphine Schantz, an official with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). “The closer they are to production areas, the cheaper the drugs become, and we are seeing rising drug use, particularly among young people in border communities.”
Army lieutenant general Worathep Bunya, who heads the anti-drug interdiction force for Thailand’s northern region, said traffickers and manufacturers from some ethnic minority groups in Myanmar often exploit family ties with relatives on the Thai side of the border to build complex smuggling networks.
“These days, some smuggled shipments can involve millions of tablets per trip. Their methods of evading detection have also become more sophisticated, and the wholesale price has fallen,” Worathep said.
“A methamphetamine tablet used to cost 100 baht. Now it costs just 20 baht. So the volume they carry has increased. If even one of these shipments gets through, it can sell for enormous profits.”
Worathep acknowledged that tackling the drug problem in the region requires better employment opportunities and improved living conditions for ethnic minority groups such as the Lahu, not military operations alone.
“We have to ensure that they have careers and livelihoods that can sustain them in modern society. Once they can rely on themselves, they wouldn’t turn to anything like drugs,” the lieutenant general said. “Every sector should help them access what they need: jobs, infrastructure, roads, electricity.”
A collective memory of fear
But anti-drug outreach programmes from the authorities are also hamstrung by a history of mistreatment and discrimination that Lahu communities have suffered under successive governments – a collective memory that has led many to view law enforcement with fear and suspicion.
Watcharapong, the researcher from the Substance Abuse Academic Foundation, pointed to the dominant role of the armed forces in anti-narcotics operations along the border as an example of state power that could give rise to excessive force or human rights violations.
“Prejudice is made stronger by the differences in culture and language, so ethnic minorities face a greater risk of violence than other groups,” Watcharapong said.
“I think the leadership of the armed forces has taken positive steps in its treatment of ethnic groups and has tried to remind personnel in the field to be more careful. But some individuals may still harbour prejudice.”
Sila, the chairman of the Society for a Better Quality of Life for the Lahu, said he still carried the scars of the War on Drugs, a government campaign in 2003 that targeted alleged collaborators in the narcotics trade with a wave of extrajudicial killings, torture and mass arrests.
At least 1,400 people with no known links to drugs are believed to have been killed in the campaign, which also placed minority groups like the Lahu in its crosshairs.
Sila said he was arrested by paramilitary officers on bogus charges and forced to spend ten days in a hole dug into the ground at their base, where he reportedly witnessed several other Lahu men accused of drug trafficking being beaten and subjected to electric shocks in order to extract confessions.
Decades after the War on Drugs came to an end, Sila said some law enforcement officials still resort to violence and extrajudicial means to combat drug crimes in areas where many Lahu have settled. Some have been arrested and had their possessions seized without cause or proper documentation, while others have been extorted for bribes when subjected to drug tests, he said.
“Because of this kind of behaviour, communities refuse to cooperate with the authorities. This should not be happening in Thailand,” said Sila, who cited his detention in 2003 as the experience that drove him to advocacy work.
“One must not generalise. There are both good people and bad people in our society. A majority of Lahu people are not involved in drugs, only some are. We deserve to be treated fairly.”
The killing of Chaiyaphum
One episode of violence that left much of the Lahu community traumatised – and thrust them into the national spotlight – was the killing of Chaiyaphum Pasae, a 17-year-old activist, at an army checkpoint in 2017.
Although the army initially claimed its soldiers had acted in self-defence after Chaiyaphum was caught with drugs and tried to attack them, that account later fell apart under scrutiny from independent inquiries and court proceedings. Those close to Chaiyaphum also denied that he had been found in possession of drugs.
“I was always watching over him. That is why I could not stand seeing them smear his name with drug allegations,” said Yuphin Saja, one of Chaiyaphum’s legal guardians. Yuphin, an activist who worked with Lahu children, recalled how she and her husband Maitree Chamroensuksakul took Chaiyaphum under their care after recognising his potential and passion for change.
After years of bitter legal struggle, led primarily by Yuphin and Maitree on behalf of Chaiyaphum’s biological parents, the Supreme Court in 2023 ordered the army to pay his family two million baht (about 62,000 USD) in compensation for his wrongful death.
Beyond the personal loss to his family, Chaiyaphum’s death was a blow to the broader Lahu community, since much of the work he had done to advance Lahu rights and empowerment came to an end with his killing, Yuphin said.
Yuphin and her husband said they were harassed because of their prominent role in the case against the military. The ordeal eventually forced them to move house several times, fearing for their safety.
“We spent seven years on the run. My own child had to leave school. When the case finally concluded, we had to start from scratch. We had nothing left,” she told HaRDstories.
“We put so much effort into making this one boy a role model to keep young people away from drugs, without any support from the government. Yet it was the state that killed him,” Yuphin continued. “When the state offered us no help, I did not mind. But when they destroyed what we had built, it sapped our will to carry on.”
With Loving Heart
On returning to her hometown, a village called Kong Pak Ping in Chiang Mai province, Yuphin was shocked by the widespread drug use among local children. Inhalant abuse was rampant, as were antisocial behaviour and fighting.
Determined to change this, she and her husband Maitree founded a small charity called Duay Jai Rak, or With Loving Heart, to steer young people away from drugs, particularly those from troubled families and disadvantaged backgrounds.
“We called it With Loving Heart because without a loving heart for these children, we wouldn’t be able to do it – we had no access to any funding or grants,” Yuphin said. “The situation for Lahu children is growing worse every day. That is why we decided to return to working with young people.”
The project began with a simple step: Yuphin and Maitree sat down with young people in their village to talk frankly about what drew them to substance abuse and other illicit activities.
“To teach them something, it takes time, love and action. We have to observe their lives first and find out what drove them to addiction,” she said. “These children have no space where they can be with someone or feel heard.”
Word spread about a charity that took a non-judgmental approach to what many others dismissed as problem children, and the couple’s home gradually became a safe space where local children gathered in the evenings to play music, share meals and take Thai lessons from Yuphin.
After spending time with the 30 or so young people who joined the group, Yuphin noted a common pattern of parental neglect, poverty and family ties to the narcotics trade. They also frequently faced hostility from village elders, who tended to view them as a lost cause.
“This is a community that sits close to the border, and drugs are everywhere. It’s easy for young people to get their hands on them, especially if there are no parents around to take care of them. Some of these kids have parents in prison,” Yuphin said. “Some don’t live with their parents, or their parents have separated and left them with their grandparents.”
She continued, “Once they’re on their own, they have to struggle to feed themselves. They have to do manual and gruelling work. So they rely on drugs for the energy to do those jobs, just so they have money to eat, and it sets them on a path to addiction.”
What nobody else offered
The success of With Loving Heart’s approach can perhaps be measured in the case of Sitthikorn, the 19-year-old who experimented with drugs before being ordered to peddle methamphetamine tablets.
Sitthikorn described meeting Yuphin and Maitree as the turning point in his life. After spending time with the pair and other young people at gatherings held by With Loving Heart, he decided to cut all ties with drugs. He now works as a farmhand and is saving money to fulfil his dream of owning a repair garage.
“The two of them are like siblings and teachers to me, because they supported me and taught me a lot of things,” Sitthikorn said. “Normally I’m someone who doesn’t listen to anyone, but when Maitree talked to me, I listened and stopped what I was doing.”
Another young member of the With Loving Heart community, Padi Pale, lost both parents at a young age and had to move in with his sister and her husband – their kitchen doubling as his bedroom. He took up manual work and drifted toward drug use at the urging of his friends: inhalants at first, before moving on to marijuana and methamphetamine.
“Whenever I saw other people with their families, I envied them,” Padi spoke of his feelings at the time. “I had always been on my own. Sometimes I felt so lonely and wondered, why didn’t I get to live like other people.”
Padi said he had loved football during his school years and had dreamed of becoming a professional player. But he was later expelled because of his inhalant addiction and frequent fights.
“The teacher even made me team captain. I wanted to walk that path, but I was too attached to my friends,” he told HaRDstories. “I used drugs to forget everything. It was too stressful. But drugs helped me forget only for a while, and those things returned again.”
His life took another turn when he was introduced to Yuphin and Maitree. Like Sitthikorn and the others, Padi resolved to quit drugs for good, and found a new outlet for the stress of hard, monotonous work: music.
“Maitree always told me it’s always hardest at the beginning,” Padi said. “After I played music with Maitree for some time, I began to open up and talk to him, and I listened to what they had to teach me. They are like my second home. They always found something for us to do, so we wouldn’t turn to drugs.”
He added simply, “If it weren’t for them, I would only have continued to make trouble.”
Watcharapong, the researcher who has studied the drug crisis affecting the Lahu, noted the absence of serious efforts by local authorities and communities to support Lahu children drawn into the drug trade, whether through parental neglect, economic hardship or lack of education.
“If there weren’t someone like Maitree and Yuphin creating a safe space for these children, they would have been pushed even further out from the system, and their behaviour would have escalated even more,” the academic said. “It’s a scary scenario. And I see it unfold in the Lahu community.”
The promise of a new law
For some, the passage of the Ethnic Protection Bill in September offers new hope for lifting the Lahu out of the drug trade’s reach, thanks to its landmark declaration that minority groups in Thailand are entitled to welfare and government services regardless of their legal status.
One of the architects of the law said that although the legislation was not specifically written to counter drug problems, he believed the provisions on equal access and equal treatment would address many of the root causes that pushed minority groups like the Lahu toward drugs in the first place – among them land rights, education, welfare assistance and a pathway to citizenship.
“The key part of the law is to recognise the identity and existence of indigenous groups,” said Apinan Thammasena, an anthropologist, “Once that happens, there will be more space for the social infrastructure and all the mechanisms to support them.”
As an example, Apinan pointed to the lack of legal protection for the Lahu before the bill’s passage as a major factor that trapped them in poverty and drew them toward drugs.
“Legal recognition of the Lahu and other indigenous groups will be followed by policies that help them access their rights, which will reduce the risks of their involvement in drugs,” Apinan said.
Drug researcher Watcharapong said he also viewed the Ethnic Protection Bill as a positive step for indigenous rights, though it remained to be seen how effective the law would be at eradicating the influence of the narcotic industry on the Lahu communities.
“Changing things through the law is only part of it,” Watcharapong said. “It also involves communicating with society. People must recognise that the Lahu are not outsiders, but fellow members of Thai society who deserve protection and decent welfare. Lahu children must not be pushed into dangerous situations.”
A song instead
At the village where Yuphin lives with Maitree, children continue to be drawn to the refuge provided by With Loving Heart, though Yuphin said their limited resources have prevented them from carrying out some of the projects they had planned, such as vocational training workshops and free school lunches for Lahu children in need.
“We have never received any support from the state, not even from the municipal authority. We once asked them for grants, but they refused on the grounds that it would take too long before what we are doing produces any result,” Yuphin said. “They did not believe that these children would simply change their ways.”
She hopes that every layer of Thai society – the government, state officials, local elders, and the Thai public – will come to understand the underlying challenges that lead young people in the Lahu communities to turn to drugs, rather than judging them with prejudice or broad generalisation.
“Once you know the story behind why a child dropped out of school, why they became a drug addict and a troublemaker, it will make you feel the pain,” Yuphin said.
At the time of HaRDstories’ last contact with Padi, the young man was still free of drugs. Rather than resorting to substance abuse as an escape, as he had in the days before he met Yuphin and Maitree, Padi said he now plays music and writes his own songs to cope with the grind of daily life.
“I feel better when I write my music,” Padi said. “I don’t want to keep everything inside. It would only make me more stressed. It would only make me go back to the old ways. So I decided to let it out through music.”
Edited by Teeranai Charuvastra
This story is a collaboration between HaRDstories and AFP, with support from the Pulitzer Center.
Nathaphob Sungkate is a indepentdent journalist, focus reporting on migration and Indigenous peoples rights. He is a Pulitzer Center’s 2025 Persephone Miel fellow.
Luke Duggleby is a long-time Thailand based photographer. He regularly works on stories related to human rights, the environment and the impact of pollution and development on local communities.
Get our latest stories direct to your inbox.
