Asia | On a high

South-East Asia is awash in drugs

The coup in Myanmar has helped cartels ramp up production

|BANGKOK

OCTOBER WAS a stellar month for the Lao police. On the 27th an officer in Bokeo, a northern province, waved down a truck packed with Lao Brewery beer crates. Contained inside them were 55.6m methamphetamine pills and over 1.5 tonnes of crystal meth, a more potent version of the drug. It was Asia’s largest drug bust ever, according to the UN. Just the week before, the police had seized 16m amphetamine tablets during two operations in the same area.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “On a high”

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