Southeast Asia’s illicit methamphetamine trade is at a record high, the UN says

BANGKOK (AP) — The illicit trade in methamphetamine and other dangerous drugs is growing by leaps and bounds in Southeast Asia, with record levels of seizures serving as an indicator of the scale, U.N experts on the drug trade said in a new report Wednesday.

Methamphetamine seizures, primarily in Southeast Asia, totaled 236 tons in 2024, a 24% increase over 2023. The increase applied to both crystal methamphetamine and methamphetamine tablets, the latter priced for a mass market, going for as little as U.S. $0.60 apiece in Myanmar. About 1 billion tablets were seized last year in Thailand.

“The sustained flood of methamphetamine to markets in the region has been driven by industrial-scale production and trafficking networks operated by agile, well-resourced transnational organized criminal groups,” says the report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC.

“We are clearly seeing unprecedented levels of methamphetamine production and trafficking from the Golden Triangle, in particular Myanmar’s Shan State,” Benedikt Hofmann, UNODC acting regional representative, said in a statement.

The “Golden Triangle,” where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet, is famous for the production of opium and heroin, which flourished largely because the remote location and lax law enforcement. In recent decades, methamphetamine has supplanted it because it is easier to make on an industrial scale.

Myanmar’s civil war fueled trafficking growth

What has turbocharged growth of the methamphetamine trade has been the political situation in Myanmar, where the army’s February 2021 seizure of power has led to civil war.

That has caused the flow of drugs to surge “across not only East and Southeast Asia, but also increasingly into South Asia, in particular Northeast India,” the new report says.

At the same time in Myanmar “there is a degree of stability in certain parts of the country, especially those known for large-scale synthetic drug production,” Hofmann said, adding that the combination has ”created favorable conditions for the expansion of drug production.”

The report says traffickers have diversified routes to markets, both within Southeast Asia and beyond. Drugs are increasingly trafficked from Myanmar to Cambodia, mostly through Laos, as well as though maritime routes “linking Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, with Sabah in Malaysia serving as a key transit hub.”

Other drugs enter from beyond the region

The report says some drugs enter the region from outside, including the “Golden Crescent,” another major drug production area covering remote mountainous regions of Afghanistan, Pakistan and eastern Iran. Crystal methamphetamine from the Golden Crescent has been found in Southeast Asian nations including the Philippines, as well as in Japan and South Korea.

North America has been the origin for methamphetamine found in Indonesia, Hong Kong, China, Japan, the Philippines and South Korea, involving trafficking by Mexican cartels, the report says.

Traffickers have “shown business acumen by leveraging digital tools and emerging technologies to facilitate and profit from the illicit trade in synthetic drugs,” it says, and some trafficking groups infiltrate legitimate businesses or set up front companies.

One major development is the growing convergence between trafficking organized crime groups and those offering services such as underground banking, the report says.