Ice, ice maybe? Myanmar cop held for crystal meth switch

A Myanmar policeman has been arrested after switching 64 kilograms (140 pounds) of seized crystal meth with salts loosely resembling the party drug known as “ice”, officials said Tuesday. Officers stumbled across the suspect packages of confiscated ice around a week ago as they carried out an inventory of seized narcotics at a police station ahead of an annual burning to mark an international day against drugs on June 26.

“Sixty-four packages out of 103 were fake,” Deputy Police Colonel Myint Swe, chief of Kengtung district police force in Shan State said, adding each package weighed one kilo (2.2 pounds). A kilo of ice is worth around 20 million kyats ($13,000) locally, giving the pilfered product value of around $830,000 inside Myanmar. It fetches several times more the further it travels from the source. Police Sergeant Myint Naing was arrested on Sunday, several hours drive away, and had been flown back to Kengtung for interrogation, police said.

“We found that he substituted the ice with alum (crystallized potassium) salt and other things which look similar to ice,” a senior drugs police officer in the capital Naypyidaw said, requesting anonymity. Drug experts believe Myanmar may now be the world’s biggest meth producer, with jungle labs in ungovernable areas of Shan state churning out untold tonnes of ice and hundreds of millions of meth pills -- known regionally as “yaba”.