Myanmar burns confiscated drugs worth around 300 million US dollars

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(26 Jun 2025)
RESTRICTIONS SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Yangon, Myanmar - 26 June 2025
1. Wide of drugs getting blown up
2. Mid of drugs on fire
3. Mid of officials observing ceremony
4. Various of firefighters extinguishing hoses
STORYLINE:
Nearly $300 million worth of confiscated illegal drugs were destroyed in Myanmar's major cities on Thursday to mark the annual International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, officials said.

The drug burnings came nearly a month after U.N. experts warned of unprecedented levels of methamphetamine production and trafficking from Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle region and Myanmar’s eastern Shan State in particular.

The country has long been a major source of illegal drugs destined for East and Southeast Asia, despite repeated efforts to crack down. The U.N. agency labeled it in 2023 as the world’s largest opium producer.

In Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon, a massive pile of drugs worth more than $117 million went up in a spectacular blaze.

The destroyed drugs included opium, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana, ketamine and the stimulant known as ice, or crystal meth, Yangon Police Brig. Gen. Sein Lwin said in a speech at a drug-burning ceremony.

Similar events also occurred in the country’s second-largest city of Mandalay, and in Taunggyi, the capital of eastern Myanmar’s Shan state, all areas close to where the drugs are produced.

A police official from the capital Naypyitaw told The Associated Press that the substances burnt in three locations were worth 297.95 million US dollars. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information has not yet been publicly announced.

Myanmar has a long history of drug production linked to political and economic insecurity caused by decades of armed conflict.

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