The instability in Burma since the coup d’état in February 2021 and the expansion of the civil war have favored an increase in the production of opium, but also synthetic drugs: Burma is at the center of a new crime boom in the Golden Region. Triangle, this contiguous region between Burma, Laos and Thailand crossed by the Mekong River for almost 100 kilometers.
Covid, then the 2021 coup, both of which created greater uncertainty for farmers, and finally, in Afghanistan, the strict ban imposed by the Taliban on poppy cultivation in April 2022 contributed to Burma’s return to the forefront in terms of drug production. : The country once again became the main producer of opium in 2022, while reversing for the second consecutive year the downward trend recorded since 2013. This was helped by the democratization of the country and an economic boom driven by the influx of foreign investments.
This article is taken from “Le Monde special issue – Drug traffickers: their networks, their crimes, the response”November-December 2024, on sale at newsstands or online by visiting our store website.
In 2023, estimated cultivated areas increased by 18% more compared to 2022, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report of December 2023. The production of dried opium, for its part , is estimated at 1,080 tons, or 36% more than in 2022, and only 20 tons less than the historical record of 2001. (1,100 tons). This report estimates that the gross value of the entire opioid economy – including both the value of domestic consumption and exports of opium and heroin – in Burma in 2023 will be between $1 and $2.5 billion, or approximately 2% to 4% of national GDP in 2022. UNODC experts, based in Bangkok, use satellite images and on-site inspections to arrive at these estimates.
Many clandestine laboratories
The majority of opium production, 88%, is concentrated in Shan State, the largest and most populous, with almost six million inhabitants, of the seven Burmese states that form the country’s multi-ethnic crown. Most of the synthetic drugs in Southeast Asia also come from here, which in turn irrigate all of Asia: drug seizures, the only way to measure the extent of this dispersed production in laboratories, reached a record in 2023; In 2023, 169 tons of methamphetamine were seized in Southeast Asia, and three quarters in Burma, Thailand and Laos, of a total of 190 tons discovered in Asia. Shan State “remains the epicenter of methamphetamine production” for Asia, says UNODC, noting that “However, Burmese authorities have not identified any major methamphetamine manufacturing facilities there since April 2020.”.
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