Hospital employees warned about probe into cold medicine

He instructed the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) to investigate the smuggling of cold medicine out of hospitals.
Chalerm said he would send police to stay at Thai embassies in Asean countries to collect intelligence and help fight drug trafficking at its roots. He said a police attache would be sent first to China in two weeks.
Outlining anti-drug policy to police chiefs in eight upper northern provinces yesterday afternoon, Chalerm said the government’s anti-drug campaign was on the right path. He said the North was the smuggling route for 87 per cent of drugs nationally, so full co-operation from Provincial Police Region 5 would lead to victory over drug trafficking. He praised region 5’s drug arrests over the past 6-7 months.
Chalerm also discussed the smuggling of cold medicine with pseudo-ephedrine through hospital drug-purchase orders, saying he had instructed the DSI to look into such cases and urged the Public Health Minister to get the Food and Drug Administration to inspect hospitals’ medicine orders.
Meanwhile, DSI chief Tharit Pengdit said he would propose cold medicine cases to the Special Case Committee soon. He said an initial probe found that Central Udon Thani Hospital and Thong Saen Khan Hospital in Uttaradit had suspicious activity in sending drugs outside the medical system. He said they would also ask the FDA for details on cold medicine orders from hospitals nation-wide to check if any cold medicine was slipping outside the system. So, the DSI hoping to look at other hospitals next week.
DSI security case chief Pol Lt-Colonel Pong-in Inkhao, who led the investigation team, said they initially found that 83 per cent of cold medicine was smuggled to other countries without going through the medical treatment system while 17 per cent was diverted from the medical system and smuggled to other countries.
The latter group included cold drugs that ‘leak’ from pharmacies, clinics and hospitals. The DSI probe was now starting to see a pattern linking them, with many paths of medicine smuggling leading to San Kamphaeng district in Chiang Mai, where a middle man would pick it up and send it to a drug-making source in other country.
In related news, a wanted drug dealer – Atthapol “Nott Kapiad” Prachoom, 29 – died in an extra-judicial killing yesterday in Nakhon Si Thammarat’s Chawang district.
Police investigators found out that Atthapol, who shot his way out of a police bid to arrest him last year, was hiding in a rubber plantation in Tambon Kapiad. They surrounded the site and presented themselves to search Atthapol, who rode a motorcycle out of a shack there. Police said the man opened fire and threw a grenade at them but it was dud, resulting to a gunfight in which he was killed. They say they found a shotgun in his hand, a pistol and some bullets near him and 300 ‘ya ba’ tablets in his motorbike basket.
In other news, Samut Prakan police yesterday announced the arrest of nine drug suspects along with 7,354 ‘ya ba’ tablets, 91 grams of crystal meth, a pistol, seven bullets and Bt163,000 in cash.