When the police got word of a staggering amount of the party drug ketamine sitting in a warehouse east of Bangkok, they moved fast. Two weeks later, after a battery of tests failed to turn up one bump’s worth of the drug, they conceded today that all 11.5 tons were nothing more than a common cleaning compound.
Justice Minister Somsak Thepsuthin today said the 475 sacks of ketamine, which had been estimated to have a nearly US$1 billion street value, contain the very run-of-the-mill trisodium phosphate, a compound commonly used in detergents that you definitely don’t want to kitty flip with in a Thonglor bar toilet.
“I admit that the agency lacks knowledge about this compound because it’s new,” Somsak said of the cleaning compound that’s been in wide use for at least seven decades, “and has never been found to be tested purple in Thailand.”
