AFP
The expansion and diversification of Southeast Asia’s synthetic drug market last year has led to a further decline in the production and demand for opium in Myanmar, although crime rings that traffic heroin continued to generate substantial profits, fueling conflict, a United Nations report said Thursday.
According to the report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), entitled “Myanmar Opium Survey: Cultivation, Production and Implications,” a downward trend that began in 2015 continued last year, when poppy farmers saw incomes decline due to trade disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Opium-dependent regions and communities are being impacted by changes in the drug economy,” UNODC Country Manager for Myanmar, Benedikt Hofmann, said in a statement accompanying the release of the report.
AFP
The expansion and diversification of Southeast Asia’s synthetic drug market last year has led to a further decline in the production and demand for opium in Myanmar, although crime rings that traffic heroin continued to generate substantial profits, fueling conflict, a United Nations report said Thursday.
According to the report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), titled “Myanmar Opium Survey: Cultivation, Production and Implications,” a downward trend that began in 2015 continued last year, when poppy farmers saw incomes decline due to trade disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Opium-dependent regions and communities are being impacted by changes in the drug economy,” UNODC Country Manager for Myanmar, Benedikt Hofmann, said in a statement accompanying the release of the report in Bangkok.