Asia's Methamphetamine Seizures Hit Record as Myanmar's Drug Trade Expands

Methamphetamine seizures have surged across East and Southeast Asia amid an influx of inexpensive drugs produced in Myanmar, highlighting the growing scale of the region's illicit synthetic drug trade, according to reporting by Kenya Akama and Sadachika Watanabe for Nikkei Asia.

Authorities across East and Southeast Asia are confronting record methamphetamine seizures as illicit drug production and trafficking networks expand across the region.

Thailand has become a major market for methamphetamine, where the drug is reportedly widely available online and at increasingly low prices.

Sayamol Charoenratana, a researcher at Chulalongkorn University, said the price of methamphetamine tablets had fallen substantially over the past decade, reaching approximately 30 baht, or about 89 US cents, per tablet.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), methamphetamine seizures across East and Southeast Asia reached a record 349 metric tons in 2025.

That was a 48% increase from 2024 and more than five times the amount seized a decade earlier. As of 2024, the two regions together accounted for nearly half of global methamphetamine seizures by weight.