Myanmar’s opium crop plummets, but no victory over Asia’s narco-boom: UN

The UNODC estimated that Myanmar's Shan and Kachin states cultivated 41,000 hectares of opium poppy in 2017, a 25 percent drop from the 54,500 hectares reported in its last survey in 2015.

By: Reuters | Bangkok | Published: December 6, 2017 2:38 pm

“The drop in opium production is welcome, but it is not a victory,” Jeremy Douglas, the UNODC’s chief in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, told Reuters.

A “dramatic” drop in opium cultivation in Myanmar underscored a regional boom in demand for illegal synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine, which many Asian countries are struggling to combat, a senior UN official said on Wednesday. The area under opium poppy cultivation dropped by a quarter between 2015 and 2017, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a report released on Wednesday.