A bill that would authorise in principle the setting up of foreigner-only casinos in the Southeast Asia state of Myanmar was submitted to the lower house of the country’s legislature on Tuesday, the Myanmar Times newspaper reported on Wednesday. The Gambling Bill 2018 is said to include amendments to an existing statute, the Gambling Act […]
Drug production in Laos and Myanmar still a major threat
January 30, 2018 by
In December 2017, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released its latest report on opium production in Myanmar and, at face value, the news was good. Since 2015, the area of cultivated opium poppy in Myanmar’s Shan and Kachin states has decreased by 25% to 41,000 hectares. And, for good measure, heroin […]
What Does Myanmar’s ‘Biggest Ever’ Drug Bust Actually Mean?
January 25, 2018 by
On Thursday, the government of Myanmar announced what it claimed as the biggest recorded drug seizure in the country’s history. While the development does deserve mention as part of a wider ongoing crackdown by Naypyidaw, the focus on such record-breaking individual seizures also obscures the massive scale of the problem the country faces as well […]
Drugs, Money and Wildlife in Myanmar’s Most Secret State
December 2, 2016 by
The remote Wa region of Shan state in Myanmar’s east is a place few outsiders have seen. The people who live in this unofficial, effectively autonomous state within Myanmar used to be called the Wild Wa, and as the BBC’s Jonah Fisher found, drugs, money and the wildlife trade are flourishing. Wa state is one […]
Myanmar’s Strongest Ethnic Armed Group Says Drug Label ‘Not Fair’
October 12, 2016 by
PANGSAN, Myanmar: Myanmar’s most powerful ethnic armed group, accused by the United States of running a narco-empire that has flooded Asia with illegal drugs, has rejected the allegation, saying Washington has blacklisted its leaders for political reasons. The United Wa State Army (UWSA) boasts some 30,000 soldiers who control a secretive, China-dominated statelet the size of Belgium in the remote hills on Myanmar’s eastern border. After decades of […]
Mekong states band together to tackle drug scourge
March 17, 2016 by
MEKONG RIVER • The Lao People’s Army patrol boat was custom- made in China with night-vision capability and two of the most powerful engines on a remote stretch of the Mekong River. Today, like most days, it sits idle for lack of petrol, guarded by a single Laotian soldier in flip-flops. Even occasional patrols by […]
Myanmar’s high opium output a huge test for Suu Kyi government: UN
December 16, 2015 by
Opium production in Myanmar has stabilized for a third year, the United Nations said on Tuesday, but remained a daunting challenge for the untested government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi that takes power in February. Myanmar produced an estimated 647 tons of opium in 2015, second only to Afghanistan, the United Nations Office […]
Solving Southeast Asia’s Drug Problem
September 22, 2015 by
The Obama administration has once again named Myanmar and Laos to its list of twenty-two countries determined to be major drug trafficking countries or major drug transit countries. The White House memo, issued on Monday, noted that Myanmar “failed demonstrably during the last twelve months to make sufficient or meaningful efforts to adhere to their […]
Myanmar becomes a major producer of heroin: TNI
March 5, 2015 by
The Transnational Institute’s recent report says Myanmar has become a major producer of heroin and amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) and drug injection has been blamed for the spread of HIV/ AIDS. According to the report, drug production and consumption trends have changed over the years. Myanmar, currently the second largest producer of raw opium after Afghanistan […]
