UN warns illicit drugs major threat to Asia - thestar.com

14:40 a decongestant found in over-the-counter cold medicines , drugs can be made from pseudoephedrine 0 Comments

UN warns illicit drugs major threat to Asia - thestar.com: "Political instability in military-ruled Myanmar has helped make it the region’s prime source of methamphetamine pills, according to a United Nations’ report on the illicit drug trade issued Thursday.
The highly addictive stimulants have replaced heroin, opium and marijuana as the top threat in several East and Southeast Asian countries, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said. Myanmar was once the main source for the world’s opium and its derivative, heroin.
The production of methamphetamines remains “at high and worrying levels,” Gary Lewis, the agency’s regional representative for East Asia and the Pacific, said in a statement. “It now poses a serious challenge to law enforcement agencies because the essential chemicals used to produce it are easily sourced.”
The drugs can be made from pseudoephedrine, a decongestant found in over-the-counter cold medicines.
Myanmar’s border areas are under loose central control, making them ideal for drug production and trafficking. Where the country’s eastern border meets Thailand and Laos is known as the Golden Triangle — for many years, the world’s biggest source of heroin. In the past decade — as opium production picked up in Afghanistan — the area has become a source for methamphetamine production as well."