Into The Dark - Submission

Ice, crystal, shabu. Called by these and other names, crystal methamphetamine use is reaching epidemic levels over a wide swathe of Southeast Asian society, from homeless children in Cambodia, prostitutes in Laos, and sweatshop workers in Myanmar to locals in Thailand. Ice is rampant in poverty-stricken areas of Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, and the Philippines. Teenagers as young as 12 have “upgraded” their bags of glue to crystal meth, leaving a generation of kids to grow up with the incessant craving for another high. This hunger can turn violent in the blink of an eye—startling authorities who are helplessly observing the rapidly growing number of teenage drug addicts as ice takes control of whole communities in Phnom Penh, Bangkok, and Burma. The recent bloody and at times extrajudicial crack-down on drug users in the Philippines is a war on both ice and its users.