In Myanmar there is a significant reduction in the area of the fields of opium poppy on a background of increasing demand for methamphetamine. It is stated in the report of the UN office on drugs and crime (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC).
“The regional market is steadily moving synthetic drugs, and the opium economy collapses,” said Reuters the representative of UNODC in South-East Asia, Jeremy Douglas.
According to the organization, two years of area in which grown opium poppy has decreased by a quarter. In the States of Kachin and Shan plant of 2017, is 41 thousand hectares, compared to 54 thousand hectares in 2015.
During the previous 10 years, UNODC recorded an annual increase in acreage of opium poppy, says Reuters.
The UN in mid-November reported that in Afghanistan, opium production reached a record: in 2017 the total area of poppy fields in the country amounted to 328 thousand hectares.
Myanmar together with Thailand and Laos are the so-called Golden triangle — the area where in the XX century there was a major system of the opium trade, which, in turn, used to produce heroin.