Officials torch $1b worth of drugs

The burnings by Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia follow another year of record seizures of narcotics

Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia torched nearly $1 billion (Dh3.67 billion) worth of seized narcotics yesterday, a defiant show of force as police struggle to stem the rising flow of drugs in the region.

The burnings, to mark the UN’s world anti-drugs day, follow another year of record seizures of narcotics from the remote borderlands of Myanmar, Laos, southern China and northern Thailand.

Myanmar in particular remains one of the world’s great drug-producing nations, a dark legacy of decades of civil war in its frontier regions where troops and ethnic rebel forces have vied for control of the lucrative trade.

Biggest bonfire

Armed gangs churn out vast quantities of opium, heroin and cannabis and millions of caffeine-laced methamphetamine pills known as “yaba” which are then smuggled out across Southeast Asia.

An estimated $385 million was burnt in three official ceremonies around Myanmar yesterday, according to a senior police officer in the capital Naypyidaw.

At the biggest bonfire in Yangon, huge clouds of smoke filled the sky as authorities set fire to stacks of opium, heroin, cocaine and tablets $230 million.

“We burnt a record amount of drugs today... because police have seized more in recent years,” drug enforcement officer Myo Kyi told journalists.

On an industrial estate on the outskirts of Bangkok, Thai authorities incinerated some $589 million worth of drugs including 7,800 kilogrammes of yaba pills and 1,185 kilogrammes of the more potent crystal methamphetamine.

And in Cambodia, officials burned 130 kilogrammes of drugs estimated to be worth some $4 million.

The huge seizures are often touted as proof these countries are making inroads into the vast regional drug trade.

But law enforcement agents say they are just the tip of the iceberg as producers ramp up production to meet growing demand across Southeast Asia and increasingly in Bangladesh and India.

And unlike their Latin American counterparts, cartel leaders in the Golden Triangle are rarely ever arrested or killed. methamphetamine worth almost