Global Ganja Report

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its newly released annual Southeast Asia Opium Survey (PDF) finds that opium production in Burma continued to increase in 2013—up 26% to an estimated 870 metric tons. This is the highest amount since the UN began keeping track in 2002. In 1999, the Burmese regime promised to eradicate opium production by 2014, but production has increased every year since 2006. The UNODC report acknowledges that eradication efforts have failed to address the political and economic factors that drive farmers to grow opium in the first place. With poppy fetching 19 times more than rice, struggling peasants have few other options to make a living.

Authorities in Hong Kong are boasting that the city's long-reigning criminal gangs, the notorious Triads, are finally crushed following an operation coordinated with police forces in Macau and mainland China's Guangdong province, in which more than 14,000 were arrested and 2,500 properties raided—including discos, massage parlours and nightclubs. Police confiscated HK$39.3  million (US$5 million) worth of illicit goods, including drugs, contraband cigarettes, pornography and weapons. Leading figures in the powerful Sun Yee On and 14K triads are said to be among the detained. 

The most enlightened cannabis connoisseurs—those who still have a link back to the values that defined the hippie culture—tend to be conscious consumers when it comes to food or computers or whatnot. They may buy organic tomatoes, boycott Taco Bell to support exploited farm workers in Florida, and petition Apple about the brutal conditions in their Chinese assembly plants. But do they pay as much attention to the source of their preferred smoking herb? 

Is there blood on your ganja?

Six men accused of murdering 13 crew members of two Chinese merchant ships on the Mekong River last year pleaded guilty Sept. 20 at their trial in Kunming, capital of China's Yunnan province. The defendants included Naw Kham (also rendered Nor Kham), purportedly one of the most powerful warlords in the Golden Triangle opium-growing region that straddles the borders of Burma, Thailand and Laos. The crew were massacred by an armed gang that attacked two cargo ships last October. Chinese media said the gang was involved in kidnapping as well as international drug running.

The UN International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said Feb. 28 that it is taking no view on the Thai government's plans to speed up the execution of convicted drug traffickers. The agency said it neither supports nor opposes the death penalty for drug-related offenses. "We are an impartial body and respect the rule of law and jurisdiction of countries," said INCB Thai board member Viroj Sumyai. 

Malaysian airport authorities have been placed on a "red alert" against drug trafficking following a surge over the past year in arrests and drug seizures. Customs officers are screening all inbound passengers to Kuala Lumpur International Airport. The airport's customs director M. Govinden said 195 kilograms (430 pounds) of drugs had been seized and 33 people arrested at the city's two air terminals so far this year, despite Malaysia's tough anti-drug laws which include a mandatory death sentence for traffickers.

Nine Thai soldiers turned themselves in Oct. 29, three weeks after a deadly attack on two Chinese freighters on the Mekong River near the Burmese border. Thirteen Chinese crew members were killed in the attack, their bodies found floating in the river. News accounts in Thailand indicate the freighters were carrying nearly a million amphetamine pills. The army commander in in Thailand's northern Chiang Rai province, Major Gen. Prakarn Chonlayuth, speculated that Burma-based Shan warlord Nor Kham had arranged the execution of the 13 Chinese seamen in a dispute over trafficking routes. (Asia Sentinel, Oct. 31; BBC News, Oct. 29)

A court in Kuching, Malaysian Borneo, sentenced a 23-year-old postman to life imprisonment and 12 strokes of the rattan cane on May 31 for cultivation of cannabis in his house. Zubairi Ismail was also guilty of possessing 2.17 grams cannabis, for which he was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment. Judge Nixon Kennedy Kumbong ordered the jail sentenced to run consecutively. Ismail was given the maximum penalty for the first offense possible under Malaysia's Dangerous Drugs Act of 1952. Zubairi appeared calm but his mother wept when the judgement was delivered. (Borneo Post, May 31)