The police announced yesterday that authorities last week seized one of the country’s largest drug hauls in years. According to news agency AFP, more than 500kg of heroin was seized in a coastal village, 610km south of the capital, Yangon (Rangoon).

It appears that traffickers had hired a fishing crew to smuggle the drugs out of the country, but a dispute over unpaid wages saw the crew instead hide the drugs and flee. The incident comes at a time when the region and its drug-trafficking operations are receiving considerable international attention.

The authorities in Myanmar, along with those in Thailand, have made moves to crack down on the problem; the United Nations (UN) praised Myanmar’s efforts earlier this year, stating that the country had reduced its production of opium by two-thirds since 1996. However, as has happened elsewhere, traffickers have instead switched their attention to other countries, notably Cambodia, as well as to the production of other drugs – especially methamphetamines (see Cambodia: 30 June 2004: UN Warns of Cambodia’s
Growing Drugs Problem, as Authorities Make Convictions in Major Haul).

The latter has created further problems for the authorities, who have seen an escalation in domestic rates of addiction to this type of drug.

Significance: It is evident that when the authorities make some gains in tackling the cultivation, trafficking and usage of illicit drugs, it loses ground in other areas, as different types of production emerge. The so-called ‘Golden Triangle’ of drug-producing states – Laos, Myanmar and Thailand – continues to create international concern, prompting China,
India and the US to join forces recently, in moves to counter
international drug syndicates.

China continues to complain that the Golden Triangle poses the greatest threat to Asian efforts to address drug
problems.