BANGKOK– There has been a slight decline in opium production in Myanmar, the world’s largest source of the illicit drug from which heroin is derived, United Nations experts said Thursday, as they warned of strong prospects for a future expansion of the deadly trade .
The Myanmar Opium Survey 2024, released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, says that after three consecutive years of growth, the area under opium cultivation has fallen by 4% to 45,200 hectares (111,700 acres) and production is down 8% decreased to 995 hectares. tonnes due to a 4% decline in opium yields.
UNODC announced last year that Myanmar had overtaken Afghanistan to become the world’s largest opium producer, say one ban imposed by the ruling Taliban after the takeover in 2021, this led to a 95% decline in opium cultivation there. Opium, the base from which morphine and heroin are produced, is harvested from poppy flowers.
Meanwhile, Myanmar recorded growth in cultivation and production between 2021 and 2023, which UNODC largely attributed to
sparked by the crisis that emerged after the military ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. The resistance to the takeover led to what is now a civil war.
Many farmers who had left opium during the period of relative stability before the military takeover returned to opium cultivation, Masood Karimipour, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said at a news conference on the study, using both ground survey and satellite surveillance.
The consequences of the supply shake-up remain unclear, UNODC experts said.
“We believe that at this time the global heroin supply chain has not yet been fully adapted,” said Inshik Sim, a UNODC research officer. “And this implies that because there is a shortage of heroin at a global level, someone to fill the markets and that could push Myanmar’s poppy farmers to increasingly engage in poppy cultivation.”
However, by 2024, fighting at the heart of the instability has become so intense that production may have been limited, due to factors such as displacement and restrictions on movement, as appears to be the case in the opium-producing Shan and Kachin regions of eastern and northern Myanmar.
That doesn’t necessarily mean production has reached a plateau, the UN experts said.
“Disturbingly, we see indications that the spreading and intensifying conflict in Myanmar is also a growing concern,” Karimipour said. “So as the situation in Myanmar remains volatile and governance and humanitarian crises there continue, we may once again see more people forced into opium cultivation.”
“And we also note that farmers have reported to us that their main reason is just to put food on the table and that economic distress will continue to increase and worsen. So we don’t predict any relief in the motivation to continue growing opium.”
“It is very important for the international community to do what it can to support farming communities, to build resilience beyond the opium economy, as the push factors we just discussed will continue,” Karimipour said, adding added: “and it is important to continue monitoring the situation in both Myanmar and Afghanistan in relation to global heroin supply chains.”
Northeast Myanmar is part of the infamous ‘Golden Triangle’, where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet. Opium and heroin production has historically flourished there, largely due to lawlessness in border areas where Myanmar’s central government has been able to exercise only minimal control over various ethnic minority militias, some of which are partners in the drug trade.
In recent decades, after opium production declined in the region, methamphetamine in the form of tablets and crystal meth replaced it. It is easier to make on an industrial scale than the labor-intensive cultivation of opium, and is distributed by land, sea and air in Asia and the Pacific.