UN agency warns there is no let-up in drugs trade from Asia’s Golden Triangle

The huge trade-in methamphetamine and other illegal drugs originating from a small corner of Southeast Asia shows no signs of slowing down, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime warned Friday.

“High volumes of methamphetamine continue to be produced and trafficked in and from the region while the production of ketamine and other synthetic drugs has expanded,” said the agency’s 2023 report, Synthetic Drugs in East and Southeast Asia – the first since the borders reopened post-Covid-19 pandemic.

The report shows a pattern of criminal groups re-establishing themselves to the pre-pandemic stage, and significantly changing trafficking routes.

The lion’s share of methamphetamine, in the form of tablets and crystal meth, comes from the area known as the Golden Triangle, where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet. The production of opium and heroin used to flourish there, mainly because of the lawlessness around Myanmar’s remote eastern Shan State. The area, much of it jungle, remains the domain of various ethnic minority militias, some of them partners in the drug trade.

“Methamphetamine continues to be the most used drug in East and Southeast Asia and that use has increased over the past decade,” the report says.

It’s also easier to make on an industrial scale than the labour-intensive cultivation of opium, from which heroin is derived. The drug is then distributed by land, sea and air all around Asia and the Pacific.