Chaing Rai – In the mountains of Myanmar’s strife-torn Shan state, the colourful blossom of opium poppies has become a more frequent sight of late. A businessman based in the Shan state notes that the flowers now bloom more freely in areas under the control of the ruling junta than in the shrinking zones held by local rebels. (more…)

China has seen a rapid rise in drug addiction this year, particularly in its southern Yunnan province where opium from Burma’s volatile Shan state is pouring across the border. (more…)

According to the 2010 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Burma is the world’s second largest producer of illicit opium. (more…)

Burma’s official media reported Saturday that troops confiscated grenades and other weapons from a border hide-out used by suspected drug traffickers, after an earlier gunbattle killed 13 policemen and members of their patrol. (more…)

Fifteen Burmese anti-narcotics agents were killed near Tachilek after drug traffickers ambushed them on the Mekong River on Saturday, according to a source at the local police department. (more…)

Burmese police and Thai authorities discussed on Monday how to cooperate effectively in combating the drugs trade in the Golden Triangle area, following an attack by traffickers that killed at least 10 Burmese police officers. (more…)

Business people on the border SHAN has interviewed confirmed that most of the drugs seized in Thailand originate in the Burma Army controlled militia groups and not Wa as reported by several news agencies. (more…)

Bangkok – A report exposing the spreading opium fields in the north-eastern corner of the military-ruled Burma has brought to light an equally revealing story. It was produced by a team of ethnic women who risked their lives to document the heroin-filled world they inhabit. (more…)

BANGKOK – The controversy over the scale of Myanmar’s opium production took another turn with the release of a new report that claims cultivation has surged in territories where the military government has recently taken control. The report draws more extreme conclusions than recent research released by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), whose Bangkok-based representatives declined an invitation to attend the new report’s release. (more…)

The Burmese military regime has set up an opium factory in the Indo-Myanmar border area as of November 2009. (more…)

Bangkok — The United Nations warned on Monday that drug-control measures were “unraveling” in Myanmar, with opium farming in the country expanding for the third consecutive year. (more…)

Keng Tung, Myanmar — Authorities in eastern Myanmar on Tuesday destroyed more than $93 million worth of methamphetamine tablets and other illicit drugs seized over the last six months. (more…)

Bangkok — Military-ruled Myanmar’s rebel ethnic groups are increasingly cashing in their illegal drugs hordes on expectations of a junta crackdown, a UN expert said Thursday. (more…)

Thai authorities seized about 300,000 amphetamine tablets in Mae Sai near Tachilek Township on the Burmese-Thai border on Sunday. (more…)

Fang, Thailand — The heroin and methamphetamine traffickers carry assault weapons and walk briskly through the night, crossing the border in small groups and traveling down a spider’s web of footpaths and dirt roads. (more…)

Support from the United States in Burma’s anti-narcotics efforts would be welcomed by the junta, state media reported yesterday. (more…)

Doi Chang Moob, Thailand — For more than half a century heroin has been carried over the jungle-shrouded hills here, the first leg of a journey that delivers the drugs to cities as far off as Sydney and Vancouver, Canada. But anti-narcotics officials are rubbing their eyes at the spectacle they are now witnessing: a flood of heroin and methamphetamines is spilling across from Myanmar as traffickers slash their inventories in a panicked sell-off. (more…)

Meeting with the Wa leaders in Shan State North’s Tangyan in April, Naypyitaw’s chief negotiator Lt-Gen Ye Myint reportedly told them in effect that the ceasefire era was finished. (more…)

More than five million methamphetamine pills have been found by anti-drugs police in a cave in Shan state in northeastern Burma, state-run media reported today. (more…)

Washington — President Obama has made no changes to the annual U.S. list of major illicit drug producers and transit countries. (more…)