Opium production in Myanmar fell by nearly a quarter this year, the UN said today, but the world's second largest poppy grower still faces a growing battle against drug use.
Lower poppy yields, slumping "farm gate" prices and more effective eradication of opium fields have squeezed production to its lowest level in eight years, according to an UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report.
Production of dry opium is estimated to have dropped by 23 per cent from last year to 670 tons, the study found.
Dry opium is the resin from poppy seeds, which is later processed into heroin and sold to booming export markets, including China, or to domestic users.
This will be the first time since 2006 that production has fallen, but Myanmar still ranks second only to Afghanistan in global opium production.
Regional and domestic demand for the drug is also surging, the UN said.
"Market demand (in Myanmar) is extremely high and it is rising, as the population goes up, affluence is going up, the market is stronger, traffickers are targeting it," UNODC regional representative Jeremy Douglas said.
Opium production across the whole of the "Golden Triangle" , a remote, mountainous wedge of land joining Laos, Myanmar and Thailand is expected to be worth around half a billion dollars in 2014, according to the UNODC.
The study found much of the drug is smuggled to China, home to 1.3 million heroin users, but it is also increasingly flooding the domestic market in Myanmar's conflict-hit border zones including Shan and Kachin states, where drug addiction is rife.
"You have the problem of extreme poverty in the Golden Triangle oddly, opium farmers tend to make less than other farmers, but they don't have anything (else) to take to the market," Douglas added.
In Laos the land used to grow poppies nearly doubled to 6,200 hectares in 2014, but the UN said that rise may in part be accounted for by better reporting.
Myanmar's harvest will be worth an estimated $340 million this year.
Experts say much of the cash will be funnelled to criminal networks in drug-producing areas including the northern state of Shan, home to the vast majority of Myanmar's crop.
The UNODC's Douglas said rebel activity complicated government plans to eradicate the drug.
"As long as people are producing (drugs) and no one is disrupting what they are doing, you are going to have peace. Going in and disrupting it is not in their (the government's) interest at the moment." Douglas said.
