Myanmar Drug Trade: Majority of drug production situated in the northeast

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Myanmar is a major location in Asia's drug-trade. It's the world's second largest producer of opium, and one of Southeast Asia's largest producers of methamphetamines. But the overwhelming majority of Myanmar's drug production comes from one region of the country. Our Correspondent Dave Grunebaum has more.

Parts of Northeastern Myanmar, near the borders with Thailand, Laos and China are essentially lawless and outside of the central government's control. There are opium poppy fields and a large underground network producing heroin and methamphetamines.

TROELS VESTER UNITED NATIONS OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME "If there's no law enforcement and no rule of law anywhere in the world what we see is larger drug production and larger drug trafficking and use."

In many of the drug producing areas, ethnic minority insurgents have been fighting Myanmar's military and militias connected to the military for decades.

The ethnic insurgents want more political autonomy in the regions of the country where they make up the majority.

DAVE MATHIESON ANALYST "Most of their armed resistance is not to do necessarily with the drug trade. It has to do with the lack of political concessions being given by the central state. Drugs just as much as much as mining and agro-business and lots of other economic factors are further conflict drivers in these areas."

DAVE GRUNEBAUM YANGON Sometimes one armed ethnic group that's not involved with the drug-trade is fighting another one that is. Or sometimes the clashes involve drug-making militias affiliated with the country's military. The United Nations says heroin and methamphetamines are a multi-billion dollar underground industry in Myanmar.

DAVE MATHIESON ANALYST "They can buy weapons with it or they attempt embryonic state building. They build roads with it. They build schools. They provide infrastructure for people they claim to represent."

But this shady industry gets help from outside of the country. Producing meth and heroin requires chemicals made outside of Myanmar.

TROELS VESTER UNITED NATIONS OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME "So what we're looking at is precursor chemicals in which you make drugs coming in largely from India and China and going back out to the region is literally yaba, meth, heroin, opium."

Authorities have a difficult time keeping up with drug producers. They only manage to catch a fraction of the drugs on the streets. But beating back the drug business has never been easy because there's so much money at stake. Dave Grunebaum, CGTN, Yangon.