A husband and wife were arrested on Saturday and almost 3,000 pills and 25 different chemicals seized during a raid on a house in Phnom Penh’s Prampi Makara district, police said Sunday.
The husband, 40, and his 29-year-old wife, both Vietnamese nationals, have confessed to operating small, home-based drug production laboratories in Phnom Penh for several years, Prampi Makara district police chief Yim Symony said.
“Now they are in custody for interrogation. They confessed to making homemade drugs and selling in Phnom Penh and some in Vietnam,” Yim Symony said.
“We found 2,964 pills of three different types…. All the pills were homemade by the couple,” said Iv Thearith, deputy chief of the municipal anti-narcotics police department.
The couple’s pills were of far inferior quality to other narcotics available in the city, he said.
“They took 10 pure pills and mixed them with some other precursor chemicals and they were able to turn the 10 into 50 pills to get more income. But the quality was only 30 percent,” Iv Thearith said, adding that amphetamines now fetch between $2 and $2.50 per pill.
Yim Symony said the couple had been based in Prampi Makara for three months but had previously operated in Russei Keo district and, prior to that, in Chamkar Mon district.
Police also confiscated a small amount of heroin during the raid and a machine for manufacturing pills, Iv Thearith said.
