UN report warns of thriving drug cartels in Asia amid lifting of Covid restrictions.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has warned that the synthetic drug trade in Asia is thriving, with crime groups establishing new trafficking routes to evade enforcement crackdowns and methamphetamine prices hitting fresh lows. The report found that meth seizures in East and Southeast Asia returned to pre-Covid numbers last year, but other key indicators such as arrests, street availability, purity as well as low wholesale and street prices “indicate the supply has remained very high or unchanged.” The production and trafficking of ketamine is also rising rapidly in the region, with authorities seizing 27.4 tons of the powerful dissociative anesthetic often used as a party drug.