According to a United Nations report, drug traffickers have found new ways to smuggle crystal methamphetamine, known as ice, from Southeast Asia to high-paying users outside the region.
Criminal gangs are moving more drugs by sea to evade land patrols in Thailand and China, making them harder to track.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said it had learned how to “divide, adapt and try to stop” law enforcement agencies.
This ice is sold in Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
The huge trade in methamphetamines and other illegal drugs, mostly from superlabs in parts of Myanmar, also shows no signs of abating, the UN agency warned.
Myanmar’s Shan State is home to the world’s largest meth trade. Traffickers send drugs across the borders of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, an area known as the Golden Triangle.
“In 2022, we see them operating more around the Thai borders than in the past,” said Jeremy Douglas, the UN agency’s regional representative.
“Smugglers have continued to send large quantities of goods through Laos and northern Thailand, but have also diverted significant supplies through central Myanmar to the Andaman Sea, where few people appear to have been seen. “
Meth comes in two main forms: pills called yaba or highly addictive crystal meth (ice).
In recent years, Thai and Chinese police, backed by both neighboring forces, have stepped up operations in the Golden Triangle.
Criminal gangs use Thailand as a transit country to get high-value crystal meth to third countries such as Australia or New Zealand, where the drug’s street value can be 10 times higher than in Bangkok.
According to the report, a large amount of Myanmar’s meth is also reaching Bangladesh and India.
In the past year, Thai and Chinese authorities have seen a significant drop in drug seizures.
Police across East Asia and Southeast Asia seized about 151 tons of methamphetamines in 2022, down from a record 172 tons in 2021.
However, the price of 1kg (2.2lbs) of crystal meth is at an all-time low, suggesting that supply is still high.
Authorities believe criminal gangs have found ways to “diversify” their networks and move drugs using alternative sea routes. Thai drug enforcement agents manage to intercept some of the goods at sea.
Earlier this week, after a four-month crackdown on drug traffickers, Thai authorities seized more than 900 kilograms of crystal meth from a trawler in the Gulf of Thailand, about 32 kilometers (20 miles) off the tourist island of Samed. . Six staff members were arrested in the operation.
Officers said the drugs may have been transferred from a small boat in Thailand to a larger trawler that may have taken the drugs to Australia.
Authorities across the region also seized a record 27.4 tonnes of ketamine in 2022, the anesthetic drug abused as a recreational party drug. It is 167 percent higher in 2021.
The report highlighted a ketamine laboratory in Cambodia that it said was capable of “industrial-scale” production.
It also expressed concern that Cambodia had become “an important transit point and somewhat of a production point for the regional drug trade.”
“The discovery of clandestine ketamine laboratories, processing warehouses, and storage facilities across the country has raised alarm bells in the region,” the report said.
