Myanmar opium harvest drops for the first time since coup: UN
BANGKOK: Opium production in Myanmar has fallen for the first time since a military coup in 2021, the UN said on Thursday (Dec 12), but the country remains the world's biggest producer of the narcotic.
Poppies have long flourished in Myanmar's remote borderlands, where ethnic minority armed groups and criminal outfits refine them into heroin and law enforcement turns a blind eye to the billion-dollar trade, analysts say.
Last year Myanmar became the world's biggest producer of opium, harvesting 1,080 tons of the narcotic – more than double that of previous leader Afghanistan after the Taliban government cracked down on poppy cultivation.
Myanmar produced 995 tonnes of opium in 2024, according to the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
There was a "strong correlation" between the reduced harvest and escalating conflict in traditional poppy-farming regions, research officer Inshik Sim told a news conference in Bangkok.
