Merchants of Madness: The Methamphetamine Explosion in the Golden Triangle
by Bertil Lintner and Michael Black
About the Authors
, a journalist and author based in northern Thailand, has covered the Golden Triangle drug trade for more than two decades.
is a Thailand-based freelance writer who has also written extensively about the region’s drug trade.
What others are saying
Andrew Marshall, author of The Trouser People — “Anti-narcotics officials claim to be winning Southeast Asia's war on drugs. Rubbish, say Lintner and Black. Opium production in the Golden Triangle is creeping up again and almost nothing can stop the regionwide explosion of methamphetamine or yaba pills. This gripping and controversial book sets out to explain why, stripping bare a narco-hierarchy that stretches from the highlands of Burma to the mean streets of Thailand and beyond. We meet drug barons who drive Humvees and live in hilltop mansions with private bowling alleys and torture chambers; bankers, businessmen, and Burmese generals who have built empires on the suffering of millions; and United Nations officials who ignore official complicity in the trade and the complex ethnic and political issues that sustain it. As Merchants of Madness shows, where there are pills there are politics. Fortunately, where there are politics there are also two of the region's most experienced journalists. Their conclusion is indisputable: until we tackle the root cause of the yaba trade—Burma's decades-long civil war—then it will be business as usual in the Golden Triangle.”
David Scott Mathieson, Asian Times Online — “Bertil Lintner, one of the world's most-respected analysts of Myanmar's Byzantine drug trade, with co-author Michael Black, a security writer with Jane's Intelligence Review, have written a short, sharp book on the dynamics of Myanmar's ATS [amphetamine-type stimulants] trade. Merchants of Madness has the fast pace and almost unbelievable dramatics of a thriller. That is, except that it's all true.” Read the full review here.
Book Reviews
- Merchants of Madness: Book review by Reinhard Hohler (Asean Affairs, July–August 2010), PDF
- No Speed Limit: Book review by David Scott Mathieson (Asia Times Online, 31 January 2009)
Related news
- Few highs for drug busters: Drug agencies in Thailand expect a surge in drug supplies from the North (Bangkok Post, 3 February 2010)
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