Bangkok Police Raid Treatment Centre to Extort Money from Drug Users

The Canadian organization, the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, which runs a treatment program for injection drug users in Bangkok Thailand, has accused the Thai police in Bangkok of raiding a treatment center to extort money out of injection drug users.

It’s a tactic health workers call ‘a serious ethical violation’.

The police apparently set up a ‘pseudo sting’ at the treatment center and then planted drugs on the arrested victims – with half those arrested claiming to have paid bribes to the police for their release.

In a statement, the Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group and the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS said, "This form of drug planting was found to be associated with numerous health-related harms including syringe sharing and drug-related overdose.”