Asia-Pacific News
Myanmar nets 322 people in 217 drug-related cases
Apr 25, 2007, 4:23 GMT
Yangon - Myanmar authorities arrested 322 people in 217 drug-related cases in March, local media reports said Wednesday.
Soldiers, police and customs officials seized 94 kilograms of opium, 1.4kgs of heroin, 3kgs of opium oil, 5kgs of low-grade opium, 28kgs of marijuana, 18 stimulant tablets, 9kgs of the stimulant ephedrine and 195 bottles of the opiod buprenorphine in the cases, the state-owned New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.
Of the people arrested, 253 were men and 69 women.
Myanmar has been one of the world's main producers of opium and its derivative heroin for decades and is now a major manufacturer of methamphetamines.
United Nations-sponsored crop-substitution projects in north-eastern Myanmar, part of the drug-producing Golden Triangle with adjacent areas of Laos and Thailand, have succeeded to weening some subsistence farmers away from growing opium although a lack of market access has undermined the benefits of the scheme.
But as opium and heroin production have fallen in recent years, methamphetamine production has increased.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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