In fact, there have been no credible reports of police units being sent away from the Golden Triangle to contain unrest in other parts of the country. The ease with which ATS production can be concealed, therefore, makes production estimates extremely unreliable.Ī source familiar with the Golden Triangle drug trade stated quite bluntly in an interview with The Irrawaddy: “All those claims about large increases are based only on information gathered from police reports about seizures, and not on any real on-the-ground research.” The claim that Myanmar’s police resources have been diverted from drug suppression to performing “other issues” is equally problematic.
The TNI also points out that the production of ATS, among them methamphetamine, or ya ba (“madness medicine”), is entirely dependent on the availability of chemicals that have been diverted from legal markets, and does not require the cultivation of specific crops like the opium poppy (from which heroin can be made), which can be monitored via satellite imagery and field surveys. The number of seizures and the amounts of drugs confiscated always fluctuate regardless of the level of production. Another could be that new couriers have been recruited, and they are taking risks that more experienced smugglers would not. It is important to note that increases in seizures could be because of other reasons, and these do not automatically mean that there is an increased equivalent in production.”Īn obvious reason in today’s context would be that the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted border security forces in, for instance, Thailand and Laos, to step up surveillance of all movements across their respective borders. The Transnational Institute (TNI), a Netherlands-based research and advocacy organization, stated in a report published in December: “Sweeping assertions that Myanmar has become one of the world’s largest ATS producers - if not the largest - and reports about sudden huge increases in production should…be treated with great caution. Apart from being disconcerted by Douglas’ offensive choice of words - “other issues on their mind” can only be interpreted as a reference to the police gunning down peaceful demonstrators - they are pointing out that there can be many reasons for the increase in drug busts, and that it does not necessarily mean that production is skyrocketing. 1, Douglas told Reuters: “Meth production increased last year from already extreme levels in northern Myanmar and there is no sign it will slow down.”Ĭritics, however, see the problem in a completely different light.
Meth syndicate free#
12, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation quoted Douglas as saying that “right now, the police are fighting an insurgency or dealing with ethnic unrest, so they have other issues on their mind, and there is free space for others to do their business.” More recently, on Feb. 28, is “the breakdown” of “security and governance” in Myanmar’s Shan State following the coup a year ago. The reason, Jeremy Douglas from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Bangkok told Reuters as far back as Oct. A recent string of drug busts in Southeast Asia - 55 million methamphetamine pills and 1.5 tonnes of crystal meth in Laos in October, and this year at least a billion pills, 6 tonnes of heroin and 4.4 tonnes of crystal meth - have led some international agencies to conclude that the production of illicit narcotics in the region is booming.