Crime Thailand’s record $1bn ketamine bust turns out to be a food additive

[tom_mai78101]

Thailand’s seizure of a whopping $1 billion of ketamine, which was billed as the country’s biggest-ever drug haul, turned out to be food additives and cleaning agents.

The justice minister, who posed for the pictures two weeks ago with the claimed record raid of the drug at a warehouse, admitted on Tuesday the initial information is wrong and the authorities had not made a major breakthrough in the battle against drugs.

"This was a misunderstanding that our agency [narcotics] must accept," he told reporters. "This wasn't a mistake. It's new knowledge," said Somsak Thepsuthin.

The Narcotics Control Board (NCB) on Saturday tested 66 sacks of the 475 bags of recovered substance. The officials stated that the substance is trisodium phosphate, not ketamine.

Trisodium phosphate is a chemical which is used as a food additive and cleaning agent.

In medicine, ketamine is used as an anaesthetic or an anti-depressant, but as a recreational drug it is used to induce dreamy or trance-like sensations, and sometimes hallucinations.

Thailand’s record $1bn ketamine bust turns out to be a food additive

The massive drug bust turned is a major faux pas for the authorities, which claimed the haul to be ketamine.

www.independent.co.uk

 

[The Helper]

The drug testing kits that they use to test stuff in the field before it goes to the lab are terrible. Of course, that won't be said here.

 

[Varine]

The drug testing kits that they use to test stuff in the field before it goes to the lab are terrible. Of course, that won't be said here.

Even lab tests are pretty faulty quite often, though my experience with drug testing is admittedly a little different than this.