The Golden Triangle -- an area of northeast Myanmar that meets parts of Thailand and Laos -- has a long history of being a major drug-producing area.
It has served as a massive production center for amphetamine-type stimulants, especially methamphetamine, used by Asian crime syndicates with distribution networks reaching as far as Japan and New Zealand.
Methamphetamine production in particular has been increasing sharply in recent years, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). During the coronavirus pandemic, Asia's drug cartels flooded markets with synthetic narcotics worth tens of billions of dollars even as the global economy ground to a halt.
Meth seizures in East and Southeast Asia surged 19% from 2019 to 2020, marking a new record high, according to the UNODC.
