Drug use rises despite falling opium production

 

Lower poppy yields, slumping "farm gate" prices and more effective eradication of opium fields have squeezed production to its lowest level in eight years, UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its latest “South-east Asia Opium Survey 2014 – Lao PDR, Myanmar” released yesterday.

Together, Myanmar and Laos produced an estimated 762 tonnes of opium, which was refined into an estimated 76 tonnes of heroin and then trafficked to neighbouring countries and beyond, the report said. The biggest market is China, which is growing and accounts for approximately 70 per cent of heroin users in Asia.

Production of dry opium is estimated to have dropped by 23 per cent from last year to 670 tonnes, the study found. 

It will be the first time since 2006 that production has fallen, but Myanmar still ranks second only to Afghanistan in global opium production. 

Regional and domestic demand for the drug is also surging, the UN said.

"Market demand (in Myanmar) is extremely high and it is rising... as the population goes up, affluence is going up, the market is stronger, traffickers are targeting it," UNODC regional representative Jeremy Douglas told AFP in Bangkok.

In Laos the land used to grow poppies nearly doubled to 6,200 hectares (15,321 acres) in 2014, but the UN said that rise may in part be accounted for by better reporting.

In the 1980s Myanmar was the world's largest producer of opium. It was overtaken in the early 1990s by Afghanistan, which now accounts for 80 per cent of global production.

Myanmar's harvest will be worth an estimated $340 million this year.

Experts say much of the cash will be funnelled to criminal networks in drug-producing areas including the northern state of Shan - home to the vast majority of Myanmar's crop.

The area is also home to several ethnic rebel groups who are widely believed to be involved in the drug trade.

Jeremy Douglas, Bangkok-based UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said “We need to act… The problem is that the plans to move farmers away from opium poppy cultivation are not connected to the plans to increase the connectivity and integration of the region. They are operating separate from each other. This is also true of drug law enforcement or border control plans; they are often being run separately from the integration plans which are moving at a much faster speed.”

Based on the average price of heroin in Southeast Asia, the trade in opiates and heroin in the region is estimated to exceed US$16.3 billion.

But taken together with methamphetamines, the drug trade in the Golden Triangle, Southeast Asia and East Asia - even without precursor chemicals and marijuana - is “conservatively estimated … at well over US$30 billion a year in sales,” Douglas said.

“That’s bigger than the economy of Laos, and bigger than the economy of Cambodia. That’s a lot of money and a lot of power and a big corrupting influence,” he said.