Opium poppy production in Myanmar ramped up dramatically following the 2021 military coup, the UN's drugs office said Thursday, as political and economic turmoil drove farmers to cultivate the crop. The area of land used for opium poppy cultivation expanded by a third to just over 40,000 hectares in 2021-22 — the first full growing season since the coup — …
Opium poppy was cultivated on more than 40,000 hectares in Myanmar last year, a 33 percent increase compared with 2021. A perfect storm of “economic, security and governance disruptions” following the military’s takeover in Myanmar have converged to create the current conditions in which opium cultivation is growing, UNODC regional representative, Jeremy Douglas, said. “A continued resurgence of opium poppy …
Hong Kong CNN — Asia’s drug cartels adapted quickly to the pandemic in 2020, flooding markets with synthetic narcotics worth tens of billions of dollars even as the global economy ground to a halt, according to a new United Nations report. These groups started using lesser-regulated chemicals to produce illicit drugs, manufactured narcotics in new locations that were hard for …
