While celebrity drug use is the hook to the UN’s International Narcotics Control Board’s new annual report, INCB’s analysis of disparities in sentencing dodges issues that impact many more people, for example the racial disparate sentences imposed on users of powder versus crack cocaine. (more…)

The number of private producers of opium poppies has increased in Man Tong Township, Northern Shan State, Palaung area, according to a local source. The report is confirmed by The Palaung Women’s Organization, based on Thai-Burma border in Mae Sot, which recently reported that opium production has become widespread since the Palaung Liberation Army gave up arms to the Burmese Army in 2005.
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Local Burmese junta authorities are encouraging people to cultivate poppy and then collecting taxes from villagers in Mongkeung Township, according to reports from Southern Shan State.
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In the latest sanctions directed at the economic assets of Burma’s junta, the United States has targeted former drug kingpin Lo Hsing-Han and his family.
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Three Chinese marine police have been injured in a gunfight with Myanmar drug traffickers in the notorious Golden Triangle along the Mekong river, Thai officials said yesterday. (more…)

Yaba is still being widely smuggled into Bangladesh, despite the Bangladesh authorities’ crackdown on yaba trafficking along the Burmese border, says an analyst from Maungdaw. (more…)

Thailand’s new government will revive a controversial war on drugs in which more than 2,500 alleged dealers were killed, Interior Minister Chalerm Yubamrung said on Thursday. (more…)

A drug smuggler was killed and 200,000 methamphetamine pills were seized after a gang of drug traffickers clashed with a task force at the Thai-Burma border in Wiang Haeng district yesterday. (more…)