Myanmar: UN reports ‘worrisome’ rise in opium cultivation

Opium cultivation in Myanmar has increased for the third year in a row, with the number of hectares rising by 11 per cent – a total of almost 50 per cent since 2006 – although production was down due to a fall in yield per hectare, the United Nations anti-drug agency reported today.

Opium hectares now total 31,700 and while this is still just a quarter of the amount grown in Afghanistan and a far cry from the early 1990s when Myanmar was the world’s biggest opium producer, “the trend is going in the wrong direction,” a UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said.

More than 1 million people are now involved in opium cultivation in Myanmar, most of them in Shan state where 95 per cent of Myanmar’s poppies are grown, according to the report – Opium Poppy Cultivation in South-East Asia ¬– produced in coordination with the governments of Laos and Myanmar.

“Increased instability in north-eastern Myanmar is affecting the opium market. Ceasefire groups – autonomous ethnic militias like the Wa and Kachin – are selling drugs to buy weapons, and moving stocks to avoid detection,” Mr. Costa said.

Despite the increase in cultivation, the overall value of Myanmar’s opium crop is falling since yields were down 28 per cent to 10.4 kilograms per hectare, production fell 20 per cent to 330 tons, and prices are more or less stable at just over $300 per kilogram. In total, the potential value of opium production in Myanmar fell by 15 per cent from $123 million in 2008 to $104 million in 2009.

In Laos, cultivation was up 19 per cent, although the overall total is low at 1,900 hectares, as is the yield at 6 kilograms per hectare. Nevertheless, with a kilogram of opium fetching $1,327 due to stable demand and scarce supply, the illicit crop remains attractive to farmers, especially as prices for other locally produced commodities are falling.

“Governments and donors need to stay the course and ensure sufficient duration of commitment and funding for all aspects of the drug issue – security, development, and health,” Mr. Costa said.

In September, UNODC reported that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, by far the world’s largest supplier of the raw material for heroin, had slumped by 22 per cent due to more robust counter-narcotics operations by Afghan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces.

While South-East Asia has managed to contain a problem that once made it notorious as the Golden Triangle of opium, the Greater Mekong region is becoming a major producer and consumer of synthetic drugs. “It would be a pyrrhic victory for drug control if South-East Asia’s opium was simply replaced by amphetamine-type stimulants,” Mr. Costa warned.