Recent crackdowns by the Chinese government on dangerous drugs like methamphetamine and fentanyl are leading to a flood of drugs being cultivated in the Mekong River regions of Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam.
The supply pouring out of the notorious Golden Triangle, an area known for its lawlessness, is so large that prices across Asia for meth are incredibly low—the lowest in 20 years in fact.
Government officials from Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam met recently in Bangkok to discuss ways to curtail the onslaught of drugs being produced and abused in their countries.
Despite a huge massive number of raids and seizures in the remote border regions of Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand in recent months, the flood of meth has not abated from the region.
Instead of taking nationwide approaches to stop the flow of drugs from the Mekong region, the officials at the gathering discussed ways of using regional cooperation and cross-country law enforcement efforts to stifle the problem.
According to Thailand attorneys handling drug cases, the governments in the region might be trying to tackle the problem in a futile manner, however.
Drug smugglers, they say, have continuously been able to outsmart authorities. When one drug route is blocked or raided, other routes are opened—essentially amounting to an unwinnable game of whack-a-mole.
Better options to defeat the problem according to experts might be to increase subsidies to poor farmers in the region so they don’t turn to growing illicit drugs in the first place.
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