Illicit drug markets in the Asia-Pacific continue to expand and diversify and appear to be largely unaffected by the coronavirus outbreak, the United Nations says.
The production of methamphetamine, the most popular drug in the region, continues to hit record highs while prices fall to new lows in east and southeast Asia, as well as Australia and New Zealand, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says in a report containing data from 2019 to first quarter of 2020.
"It is hard to imagine that organised crime have again managed to expand the drug market, but they have," said Jeremy Douglas, UNODC representative for southeast Asia and the Pacific.
"While the world has shifted its attention to the COVID-19 pandemic, all indications are that production and trafficking of synthetic drugs and chemicals continue at record levels in the region."
Inshik Sim, a UNODC illicit drugs analyst, told Reuters that recent intelligence suggested there had been no change in the street price of methamphetamine in Bangkok or Manila, the capitals of Thailand and the Philippines and the biggest markets for the substance in southeast Asia.
This, he said, showed there had been "no impact on its availability in the market".
The pattern of drug trade on the consumer level, however, has shifted more to online social media platforms as government measures against the coronavirus limits people's movement, said Thailand's deputy secretary-general of the Narcotics Control Board Paisith Sungkahapong.
"We have found the increase in the online drug trade via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and also we found a lot of drugs being conceal and transport to buyers via the postal, public and private services," he said.
The relative stability of the drug market in much of the Asia-Pacific contrasts with the experience in North America and Europe, where tougher travel restrictions and border controls have disrupted supply chains and pushed prices higher.
In recent years, transnational crime groups based in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau have expanded the sophistication and scale of methamphetamine production in industrial-scale labs in northern Myanmar and widened their distribution network as far as Japan and New Zealand.
As supply has surged and prices have fallen, the purity of the drug has increased, the UNODC report says.
Reuters
