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Opium In East Asia

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dominated the world’s opium production since the 1950s.
The area of The Golden Triangle extends over 36,700 square miles and overlaps the mountains and regions of three Southeast Asian countries: Myanmar, Laos and Thailand. This region was the key producer of heroin until the early 21st century, when Afghanistan became the world’s largest producer. Opium was not used as a recreational drug on wide scale in Southeast
Asia until the infamous Opium Wars of the 19th century. The Opium Wars led to an increased demand for and production of opium in the Southeast Asian region, setting the stage for the magnification of the Golden Triangle. According to recent UN reports, opium production in this region has rapidly been increasing due to high drug …show more content…

The two countries together produced more than 893 metric tons of opium which is a 26 percent leap from the past 7 years. This drive is said to be fueled by the growing demand in the local and regional markets. In Myanmar, a 15-year plan was launched in 2000 which targeted illicit opium poppy production. It was supposed to culminate by 2014, but however it has been extended by five years, and will now end in 2019.
The Golden Crescent, located at the intersection of Western, Central and Southern Asia. This stretch comprises of three nations- Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, whose mountainous perimeter defines the crescent. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the nations which produce the opium, with Iran bringing consumers and trans- shipment route for the smuggled opiates. Within 10 years, Afghanistan became the largest opium producer in the world. When the Taliban took control in Afghanistan in the early 1990s after a significant amount of international pressure, they put a ban on opium output which led to …show more content…

Due to strict and vigorous law enforcements in the region, in the 1990s Columbian drug cartels were weakened and the Mexican cartels progressively seized control of most of the trafficking chains. Because of this change in production, increasing amounts of cocaine began to be shipped towards Northern America. United States became a prime destination for drug traffickers but nearly 30 percent of the worlds cocaine production traveled towards Europe, via West-Africa. The major drug trafficking cartels are either Mexican or Colombian, and generate a total of 42 billion dollars in the drug proceeds per annum. This increased level of cocaine production in the Latin America and the Caribbean has lead this region to have the world’s highest crime rates, with the murder aspects reaching as high as 32.67 per 100,000 of population in

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