Yesterday the [him] moderator posted a question about a figure in the drugs and development oped written by Nick Crofts. A reader has offered an explanation below for the high figure in it. Thanks for responding.

It is always a mistake to extrapolate a figure in one region and apply it to the whole country. Numbers have a way of being repeated and repeated until they have a magical significance. For instance, the magical outdated number of half a million people infected is still around. And the magical unproven proportion of 70/30 people infected through sex and needles is still used.

Are there other magical figures out there that need to be questioned?

[him] moderator

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The percentage seems to come from an appendix (on "Drug eradication and alternative development in Burma") of the report that the article in The Guardian is based on. The quoted percentage concerns the Wa region, and it is not clear whether the number concerns the populations income before or after the opium ban in the area:

Impact of opium eradication on household economies:

After ASEAN declared its aspirations to be drug free by 2015, the Burmese government announced a 15-year opium cultivation elimination plan, in 1999. With significant support from the UNODC, phased opium eradication began in northern Shan State 1999-2004, eastern Shan State and Wa region in 2004-2009, and parts of southern Shan State in 2009-2014 (TNI, 2009). The bans have had devastating effects on those farmers who cultivate opium as their main cash crop – nearly two million people in Shan State lost their primary source of income (TNI, 2005). In Kokang, it is estimated that 90% of the population were making a living from opium sales (UNODC, 2010). In the Wa region, 82% of farmers use money from opium poppy cultivation to buy food and 73% of household income is attributed to sales of opium (TNI, 2009).