Players inside Australia's crystal meth supply chain break their code of silence.

In a suburban Melbourne kitchen, a man with his face obscured by two hoodies and sunglasses pulls out a glass pipe, crumbles in a white mixture and heats it.

Smoke swirls out and he inhales sharply.

"Drugs don't really affect me anymore," he says, exhaling.

This man is no ordinary drug user. He's a crystal meth — or "ice" — cook and dealer.

Australia is one of the most lucrative markets in the world for methamphetamines.

In the year to August 2023, the country smoked, snorted and shot up about 10 and a half tonnes of the stuff — a 17 per cent increase on the year before, and more than double the amount of cocaine.

It's a highly addictive stimulant that can have devastating consequences.

For months we've delved deep into the drug's murky supply chain to find out who is keeping the meth flowing into Australia, retracing the journey it takes to get to our streets from one of its sources in South-East Asia.

This is a highly secretive, illicit world. It can be difficult to verify everything people tell us. But the stories these figures share match much of what we have discovered during the investigation.

It all starts at the bottom, with the man in the two hoodies.

The dealer

He asks us to call him Brendan. It's taken ages to gain his trust, and when we finally meet, we have no idea he's going to give us a cooking demonstration.

He pulls out a bag of huge white crystals that have "just come off a block".

Just one gram of this would be worth more than $300, he says. So how much for an entire rock?

"I think if you put this out on the street, you'll get rolled," he replies.  

Brendan places a tub of powder commonly used for muscle and joint pain relief on the kitchen bench.

"It liquefies and re-solidifies at the same rate that ice does," he explains.

Using a foil boat and a lighter, Brendan shows us one part of the process used to "cut" ice – the way some dealers dilute the drug with a cheap substitute to increase its volume and maximise their profits.

It's risky business.

"If I was to extend the product physically, I'm really looking at changing a five-year sentence to a 15-year sentence," he says, describing the increased prison sentence for manufacturing the drug.

After sampling his mixture, Brendan says the meth in Australia has changed.

"Back in the day when we had a lot of pseudo[ephedrine] in the country, we had a lot of good cooks; some of the best in the world," he says.

"[Now] it's just easier to have it made overseas."

Brendan says we need to talk to those much higher up the supply chain to understand what's going on.

The distributor

"Jay", as he wants to be known, wipes his forehead to stop beads of sweat from rolling into his eyes.

He's jittery and nervous. It's rare for someone who has operated at his level to speak on camera.

To run a meth syndicate, you need several key players.

First, you need a manufacturer to produce the drugs, usually overseas; then traffickers to get them across the borders into Australia; then an enforcer to keep everyone in line; and a distributor, who facilitates the supply of drugs onto the streets through a network of dealers.

Jay says he used to be a high-level distributor, until he was done for trafficking, and is no longer in the business.

He wasn't always a high roller. He tells us he started out selling cannabis as a teenager, but dealing weed was exhausting.

"On a daily basis I was getting at least 70, 80 phone calls. Like, I couldn't even sit down to have [a] proper meal," he says.

He first heard about meth when someone offered him a bag to sell for a "ridiculous" amount. It took him less than two days.

When the meth trade was good, he says, he was making about $30,000 to $40,000 a week.

When he saw what it did to his clients, Jay says he was disgusted.

But the way he saw it, he was looking after them.

"If they don't grab it from me, they'll grab from elsewhere … Someone else could probably give 'em shit product."

Jay says when he was a distributor, a kilogram was considered a large amount of crystal meth. Today, he says people talk in tonnes and half tonnes.

"That's where the Triads come in."

The enforcer

Violence is the only form of regulation within the drugs trade, and "Johnny" used to be an enforcer — or the "muscle" — for an Asian organised crime syndicate.

In an upmarket hotel room overlooking the Yarra, he leans forward in his chair.

"I'm loyal to the people I'm with and I'm aggressive and violent to protect them," he says.

Triads are secret societies that date back to 17th-century China. Initially, they were mutual aid groups formed in opposition to the Qing dynasty. Today, they're synonymous with Asian organised crime globally — including in Australia.

Underworld sources tell us there's a hierarchy among Triads here; Melbourne Triads report to Sydney, Sydney to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Macau, and Macau to Triads in mainland China.

Johnny won't comment on that, he just says Triads are well-organised and disciplined.

"To them, business is more important than violence."

Johnny says Triads only use violence when they need it, "but if someone else is doing it, not them, [that's] smart, right?"

Johnny knows all about violence.

He says he was initially a good kid but in his early teens started hanging out with a troubled child and getting into fights.

He went on to serve 16 years in prison for hacking a man to death with a samurai sword.

"I can't hold back. Even if you pull me back, I will go forward again," he says.

Johnny says he's no longer involved in that world.

For years, several Triads operated in a lucrative network called The Company, which at its height was thought to be earning as much as $17 billion a year – and Australia was a key market.

The man police allege was head of The Company, Tse Chi Lop — also known as Sam Gor — was arrested in 2021 and eventually brought to Australia to face charges of trafficking methamphetamine. He's currently awaiting committal in a Melbourne prison.

The volume of crystal meth coming into Australia has increased more than 500 per cent in the past decade.

There are two major sources of production: Latin America and South-East Asia, where we travelled to learn more.

It's rush hour in the Golden Triangle — a mountainous region that covers the borderlands of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, and the heartland of meth production in the region.

At a checkpoint in Mae Sai, northern Thailand, authorities are on high alert.

Police with sniffer dogs are stopping traffic, looking for drugs, mainly methamphetamines, that might have slipped across the border from Myanmar as they make their way into the global market.

Patrick Winn, an investigative reporter who has studied Asian drug markets for a decade, says the people at the very top of the meth trade are usually Chinese and they operate in these regions.

"They will form these networks to produce a giant load of meth, and if it's making money, they'll do it again," he says.

But they're not always Triads.

"These people are interested in business, and their sons and daughters go to nice private schools, and they live in normal neighbourhoods," he says.

We're here to meet a man who works in one of Myanmar's meth super labs, just a few kilometres away.

The lab worker

Wearing a balaclava, and calling himself "Mr A", this man is speaking to us at great danger to himself.

The day before we meet, the Thai military shot and killed 15 meth mules as they tried to cross the border.

"My job is, I work with the Por Kru. That's what we call the master," he says.

"The master crystallises the ice, then carts it out to the laboratory."

Mr A shows us how he wraps a kilogram of a white crystal substance in carbon paper. He then packs it into a teabag and seals it.

In the lab, he says he packs anywhere from 10 to 50 teabags a day like this — sometimes the lab produces up to 50 kilograms a day.

Mr A used to play sport at a high level but got injured, so he started using and selling meth. Then he got a job in the lab, which he says pays well. 

Each time the drug crosses a border, its price jumps.

At the point of production in Myanmar, a kilogram of crystal meth can be as low as $1,500. Once it moves into northern Thailand, it sells for $3,000 to $5,000 per kilogram. By the time it gets to Australia, the wholesale price is usually more than $60,000.

Mr A is cagey when we ask who owns the lab he works in. Then he says:

"I can't tell you the name … The owner is from Wa ... United Wa State Army."

The militia

It would be easy to overlook Khun Lu, the deputy secretary of political organisation the Wa National Organisation (WNO).

Wearing a baseball cap and denim jacket, he's understated and speaks very little.

The Wa are a people indigenous to Myanmar and China, and we're trying to cross the border into Myanmar to visit the military wing of Lu's organisation, the Wa National Army (WNA).

They're not sure they can guarantee our security. We're told an international media organisation has never set foot on their army base or interviewed any of its current leaders before.

Four Corners is told the WNA has connections to another organisation, the United Wa States Army (UWSA), the largest ethnic armed group in Myanmar that profits enormously from the meth trade and enjoys support from China.

The majority of crystal meth that ends up on Australian streets from this region is likely produced in super labs on territory controlled by the UWSA.

Jeremy Douglas, from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, has led the UN's anti-drug operations in the Golden Triangle for more than a decade. He says recent measurements put the meth economy here at about $70 billion.

But since the coup in Myanmar in 2021, governance has deteriorated and internal fighting between the military junta and ethnic armed groups has raged.

The absence of law and order is partly responsible for the surge in meth production, he says.

"It's one of those things that needs to have a public discussion … It requires a response that's political in nature."

Lu tells us we can cross the border early the next morning. We're asked to dress more like tourists and hide our large camera.

At 7am we jump on scooters with Wa security forces and reach a base the size of a few football fields on a flat hilltop. About 200 fighters are living here in huts with outdoor kitchens.

We're introduced to the commander of this particular militia, Colonel Lu Mong, who points out the hilltops a few kilometres away where there's been fighting.

"When the Karenni are fighting with Tatmadaw [the Myanmar military], we can hear the sound of cannon fire," he says.

"We can hear when a helicopter comes and also the gunfire."

Reporter Patrick Winn says it's usually Chinese syndicates which are ultimately responsible for running the super labs in Myanmar, and armed groups act more like landlords.

"They'll usually sit it next to a stream — it takes a lot of water to make meth — and the armed group will take a tax of the meth production [and] make sure that it's not raided by cops," he says.

Revenue from the labs can go towards buying anything from weapons to medical supplies to new roads in impoverished parts of the country, and any leader faced with these challenges would make similar choices, he says.

"If someone put one of the MPs of the UK or Australia … in charge of one of these groups, by day two, they would be looking at the drug trade."

Colonel Lu Mong says the WNA does not support the drug trade.

"We are against it", he says emphatically.

But, he concedes, it's not the case for other armed groups.

While our investigation might have reached a source, it's only one, and the most damaging issue lies back with addiction in Australia.

"If there's demand on the Australian side for more crystal meth, if it's really moving, the order can go all the way back up to the meth labs in Myanmar, and they have the capacity to produce more," Winn says.

"The flow is so heavy, it's just unstoppable."

AFP Deputy Commissioner Ian McCartney tells Four Corners that police are "having an impact both domestically and internationally, but unfortunately, Australia still has an insatiable demand for drugs".

In recent weeks, the front line has shifted to meet that demand, with North American-produced methamphetamine – primarily from Mexico – now surpassing supply from South-East Asia.

Deputy Commissioner McCartney says the AFP is working with its international partners to both seize illegal drugs destined for our shores and affect the arrest and prosecution of high-value targets behind the organisation of their importation.

"We know where these people are. We know what countries they're in … and we are coming after them."

Watch Four Corners: Meth Highway, tonight from 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.

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Credits

Story by: Mahmood Fazal and Mayeta Clark

Research: Dylan Welch

Editing and production: Kate Sullivan