Opium farming blooms in Myanmar after military coup: UN report
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in a statement that came out on Thursday that the production of opium in Myanmar has gone up a lot since the military coup in 2021. Political and economic unrest has driven farmers to produce the crop.
Because of the military’s takeover of power in February 2021 and the war that followed between the junta and rebels who opposed the coup, the country’s economy is no longer working.
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According to a report that was released on Thursday by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the amount of land that was used for cultivating opium poppies increased by a third, reaching just over 40,000 hectares in the 2021–22 growing season. This was the first full growing season that occurred after the coup.
The potential output reached 790 tonnes, which is an increase of approximately 90 percent compared to the previous year’s total.
According to the research published by the UNODC, the results show that Myanmar’s opium economy has grown ‘substantially.’
Jeremy Douglas, a regional representative for the UNODC, says that farmers ‘have had little choice but to go back to opium’ since the military took over in February 2021 and caused problems with the economy, security, and government. This took place after the military took control of the country.
‘The dilemma that the country is facing is directly tied to the boom that we are witnessing in the drug business.’ Also Read | With India prohibiting tur imports from Myanmar, they find China market is best
The research, which was put together using fieldwork and satellite images, shows that the trend of opium production going down from 2014 to 2020 has changed.
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