Southeast Asia's illicit methamphetamine trade is at record high, the UN says

The illicit trade in methamphetamine and other dangerous drugs is growing by leaps and bounds in Southeast Asia, with record levels of seizures serving as an indicator of the scale, U.N experts on the drug trade said in a new report Wednesday. “The sustained flood of methamphetamine to markets in the region has been driven by industrial-scale production and trafficking networks operated by agile, well-resourced transnational organized criminal groups,” says the report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC. At the same time in Myanmar “there is a degree of stability in certain parts of the country, especially those known for large-scale synthetic drug production,” Hofmann said, adding that the combination has ”created favorable conditions for the expansion of drug production."