Opium production in the notorious Golden Triangle in Asia is expected to fall this year, continuing a generally downward trend that began in 1996, the United Nations reports today.
A UN survey of Burma and Laos, which make up the Golden Triangle together with Thailand, found that opium poppies were being cultivated on 183,300 acres this year in the two countries, compared to 235,900 acres in 1996.
But there is no room for complacency as farmers in the region still depend heavily on poppy cultivation for their livelihoods while their governments remain hostage to the international drug trade and related criminal activities, the report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said.
There has also been no decline in opium production in Afghanistan, the world's biggest grower, Mr Antonio Maria Costa, who heads the U.N. drugs office, told the 15-nation UN Security Council on Tuesday.
Burma is the world's second largest opium producer while Laos is the third-largest. The UN estimates are based on extensive national surveys backed up by satellite imagery and field verification.
The UN report estimated the combined 2003 harvest from Burma and Laos at 930 tonnes compared to 940 tonnes in 2002. Afghanistan alone last year produced 3,400 tonnes.
In 2000, Afghanistan's hard-line Islamic Taliban rulers reduced the growing of opium but since their ouster by US forces in 2001, production of the drug has risen sharply under the protection of warlords.
The UN drugs office survey program does not cover Thailand because it is not among the six top opium-growing countries - a list that includes Bolivia, Colombia and Peru as well as Afghanistan, Burma and Laos.
Thailand is instead a major conduit for heroin produced from opium poppies grown mostly in neighboring Burma and Laos.
Thailand launched a fierce crackdown on trafficking in illegal drugs within its borders this year, announcing at the end of April that it had cut narcotics use by 90 per cent through the campaign, during which 1,612 dealers and traffickers were killed.
The UN office said the key to reducing poppy cultivation was to provide farmers with alternative sources of income and said too little money was available to governments to do an effective job of finding substitute livelihoods.The sums of money that would be needed are not huge. For all of 2003, it estimated that each family in Myanmar involved in opium production would earn $175 on average while each opium-growing family in Laos would earn $88 on average.
About 350,000 households in Burma and 40,000 in Laos are urrently directly involved in opium cultivation, the report said.
Only a small but growing number of those households was currently benefiting from programs providing an alternative livelihood, it said.