Earlier this month, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released its latest regional report showing another year of record-breaking increases in drug seizures made by countries in Southeast and East Asia, particularly of methamphetamine and ketamine -- both synthetic drugs produced and trafficked regionally for the past two decades.
While increased seizures may indicate successes in efforts to reduce the size of drug markets, the fact that retail prices have dropped in Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia suggests that the availability of synthetic drugs is greater than ever before. This has been reaffirmed in the UNODC World Drug Report 2026, released earlier this week to mark World Drug Day today.
