Prices soaring at harvest season

Prices soaring at harvest season

Drugs

As the season's opium is being gathered across Shan State, the price quotes have also been pushing higher indicating, more than a shrinking supply, an increase in demand, said sources. 

"To be sure, the total growing areas in the north have not changed significantly despite reduced official curb this year as many are still cowering under brutal suppressions during the past few years," said the source in the north where the UN office on Drugs and Crimes had reported last year of a 50% reduction in output. "Most of the farmers have moved to the Wa region east of the Salween instead. However that does very little to flatten the market." 

The reason was two-fold: the growing external demand of opium's derivative, heroin, and the continued existence of the refineries despite official suppression. 

"It used to be 280,000-300,000 kyat (roughly $280-300) per viss (1.6 kg) last year," said a businessman. "But now they are selling it for K 450,000 - 500,000." 

Opium prices in southern Shan State have also increased from K 200,000 to K 250,000-260,000, while in Mongton, eastern Shan State, it is fetching K 320,000, according to traders coming to the border. 

Destruction of poppy fields remains token. "On 12 April 2003, a field in the Wa area was ravaged by the officials in front of foreign observers," a former Wa officer remembered. "The farmer was given 1,040 old coins ($3,120) as compensation after the visitors had gone." 

Both heroin and methamphetamines nowadays are being exported to lower Burma and China, according to them. "As for India, we heard new factories are being established on the western border," said a Shan ceasefire officer. His statement however has yet to be confirmed by independent sources. 

China, according to an a presentation made by Guilhem Fabre, (University of Le Havre) at the Conference on Drugs and Conflict in Burma, 14-15 December 2003, in Amsterdam, is in the opium-heroin equation, a blackhole. Official figures place the number of Chinese addicts at 2 million. 

Burma's counter-narcotics campaign has been reported by S.H.A.N. in Show Business: Rangoon's War on Drugs in Shan State, December 2003.