Who needs poppies to make amphetamines?
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UNODC to expand anti-drug aid project in Myanmar
Xinhua General News Service
8 May 2006
Yangon: The United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) in Myanmar is planning to expand its alternative development assistance project in the country's Wa special region- 2 in northern Shan state to help eradicatedrug, a local weekly reported Monday.
The agency will make the move, while inviting support from international donors, Shariq Bin Raza, new UNODC chief in Myanmar, was quoted by the Myanmar Times as saying.
Shariq stressed the need for sustainability of opium production reduction in the country, saying that the sustainability can only come when poppy growers can sustain the livelihood without depending on illicit crops.
UNODC project in Myanmar has been implemented since the 1990s for eliminating drug production.
Meanwhile, the 2005 Annual World Drug Report, based on the surveysundertaken by the Joint Myanmar-UNODC Illicit Crop Monitoring Program,indicated a declining trend both in cultivation and production in Myanmar with an estimated poppy cultivation dropping 59 percent from 105,000hectares to 32,770 hectares during the past five years and the potential opium production falling 61 percent from 1,097 tons to 319 tons.
Another U.S.-Myanmar joint opium yield surveys conducted with the Counter Narcotics and Crime (CNC) said that opium production in Myanmar dropped 88percent from 2,650 tons in 1996 to 292 tons in 2004.
Despite marked decline in opium and heroin seizure in the country inrecent years, it witnessed the escalating problem of amphetamine type stimulants.
According to official figures, from 1988 up to March 2006, the Myanmarauthorities confiscated 37.9 tons of opium and 7.4 tons of heroin as wellas a large amount of various kinds of other drugs with a total streetvalue of 20.4 billion U.S. dollars, arresting 105,417 drug offendersincluding 17,993 women.
Myanmar has been implementing a 15-year drug elimination plan ( 1999-2000to 2013-2014) to totally wipe out drugs and the third five-year plan beginning 2004-05 is underway.
The country successfully established two opium-free zones in Shan state, one in the Mongla region in 1997 and the other in Kokang region in 2003.The Wa region is expected to be declared in the near future.
