Concerns Grow Over Reports of Increased Synthetic Drug Production in Myanmar

Civil war has allowed crime groups to boost manufacturing capacity, say Thai authorities

- Zaihan Mohamed Yusof

Record seizures of synthetic drugs in East and South-east Asia have set off alarm bells, as reports emerge of heightened production in Myanmar amid the chaos of civil war.

There is growing concern that organised crime syndicates are slashing prices of methamphetamine, Ecstasy, ketamine and yaba, a combination of methamphetamine and caffeine, to move more illicit products in the region.

Shan State in Myanmar is known as the leading source of synthetic drugs in the region, while Thailand is a major transit route for illicit drugs from the so-called Golden Triangle region where the north of the kingdom, Laos and Myanmar meet.

A 2024 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report showed that the authorities in Thailand in 2023 seized 648.9 million yaba tablets and 26.4 tonnes of crystal methamphetamine, commonly known as Ice, compared with 395 million yaba tablets and 17.6 tonnes of Ice in 2019.

Thailand's Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) told The Straits Times the situation in the kingdom is worse now than in 2019, when ST travelled to Thailand's northern Chiang Rai province to investigate the impact of drug smuggling at the Thailand-Myanmar border.

South-east Asia was then the largest and fastest-growing meth market in the world, with seizures rising more than eightfold between 2007 and 2017.

ONCB told ST that the Thai authorities had seized 488 million yaba tablets and almost 10 tonnes of Ice along the Thailand-Myanmar border in 2024 as at September.

Said the drug enforcement agency: "Ice is having a swing in the last three years. We can see some smuggling into southern Thailand to be distributed to third countries."

It added that the ongoing civil war in Myanmar has allowed organised crime syndicates to increase manufacturing capacity, with "the potential to produce an infinite amount of drugs".