Myanmar’s Uncurbed Drugs Menace Consuming India Too

Photo – AFP

On February 8, a cache of narcotics – including methamphetamine tablets and heroin – was recovered from an outpost manned by junta troops in Kachin State’s Machanbaw Township¹. Earlier in the same week, Myanmar’s Vienna-based Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador U Min Thein, apprised the International Narcotics Control Board of the country’s drug enforcement activities, calling the eradication of the drug menace a national priority². After all, Myanmar is a haven for drug traffickers, with opium being cultivated in a whopping 53,100 hectares of land. A 17 percent rise in farming recorded in recent times has consolidated the opium economy, sustained by prolonged conflict and economic collapse. It is now worth between $641 million and $1.05 billion, roughly equalling 0.9 to 1.4 percent of the country’s 2024 GDP³. Since fresh opium fetches $329 per kilogram, producing it appears to be a tolerated vice in Myanmar to confront the cycle of poverty. 

Delphine Schantz, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Head of UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has warned that Myanmar is on the edge of a precipice, and what happens in the country will shape drug markets in the region and far beyond. Alarmingly, Myanmar is also the global epicenter of methamphetamine today, being its largest manufacturer. Methamphetamine is an addictive synthetic stimulant that is easier to make on an industrial scale than labour-intensive opium and distributed in tablet and crystal form. The primary reason for this illicit drug’s huge demand is the capacity to produce euphoric effects, lasting up to 24 hours, apart from its cheap availability⁴.

Drug use in Myanmar is more intense in Kachin and Shan States, where one in 20 adult men inject drugs⁵. The Golden Triangle narcotics hub is located in Shan State, which is infamous for opium cultivation, heroin manufacturing, and Amphetamine-Type Substances (ATS) synthesis. Pure heroin sells at $1 per gram here. Interestingly, the history of drugs in Myanmar and extended Southeast Asia is rooted in the 19th century European colonization and governance of the region. Empires profited enormously from opium’s popular consumption among the indigenous population and the migrant diaspora – be it in Singapore, the Philippines, Sumatra, Malaya, Saigon, or erstwhile Burma. Opium’s commercialization contributed to the development and maintenance of major colonial industries.

Such massive proliferation of narcotics is triggering health emergencies, including high HIV prevalence. Therefore, drugs are no longer a law-and-order issue, but a social crisis.

However, from the early 20th century, a dramatic reversal was noticed, as opium ceased to be the fiscal bedrock of colonial empires. A British administrator, Donald Mackenzie Smeaton, stationed in Burma since 1879, pioneered the first anti-opium reform of its kind in a European colony in Southeast Asia⁶. An empirical study made him come to the conclusion that nearly 11 percent of lower Burma’s population were harmed by opium smoking. Subsequently, the British government of India acknowledged that one in 10 colonial subjects was injured by opium use and enforced a ban on popular consumption of this highly addictive narcotic. But the shadowy drug trade continues to cause moral wreck in 21_^st-century Myanmar.

The New York Times described Myanmar as the “Global Crime Capital” and a magnet for criminal syndicates, particularly from China⁷. It is also one of the world’s largest hubs of organized crime, with an enabling environment for booming synthetic drug production, rampant cyber-scam operations, and high-risk money laundering. Meanwhile, narcotics from Myanmar have swamped India’s peripheral northeastern region⁸. The spillover is evident from record seizures of drugs, which are just a fraction of what slips through in a zone grappling with the challenge of drug trafficking since the 1970s. However, precursor chemicals are smuggled into Myanmar from western India for processing in clandestine laboratories⁹. Manufactured drugs are then secretly shipped back to India primarily in two forms: yaba, meaning crazy pill in the Thai language, and crystal meth.

India’s Mizoram state alone intercepted 527,900 meth tablets in April, 2,625,890 in May, and another 333,300 in July last year alongside heroin consignments¹⁰. Another border state, Assam, has seized drugs worth 26 billion rupees since 2021¹¹. Besides, 160,000 Yaba pills were seized from the state of Manipur in a joint operation along with over 7.7 kilograms of heroin and 6.7 kilograms of opium¹². Whereas tiny Tripura, surrounded by Bangladesh on three sides, confiscated 160 million rupees worth of tablets recently¹³. Drug consumption in another state Nagaland, is a mind-boggling 10,000 kilograms per annum¹⁴. Besides, India’s Coast Guard recovered 6,000 kilograms of methamphetamine worth 360 billion rupees from a Burmese trawler near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in November 2024¹⁵. Such massive proliferation of narcotics is triggering health emergencies, including high HIV prevalence. Therefore, drugs are no longer a law-and-order issue, but a social crisis. Since 2021, India has been balancing its ties with both the junta and ethnic armed organizations. Leveraging that deftly will enable them to cooperate in India’s war against drugs.

Seema Sengupta is a Kolkata-based journalist and columnist.

References

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