''For the past 20 years, China has been the main market for Myanmar’s rich bounty of illegally produced opium and its potent derivative heroin. But recent declines in both drugs’ prices and production in Myanmar’s section of the opium-growing Golden Triangle region suggest changing consumption patterns in China, including a shift towards more synthetic drugs such as ice, cocaine and potentially the locally made opioid fentanyl. According to a recent United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) survey, areas under opium cultivation dropped to 37,300 hectares in 2018, down from the 41,000 hectares in 2017. Total opium production, meanwhile, dropped from 550 to 510 metric tons, the same survey showed. That equates to around 50 tons of heroin, as it takes 10 kilograms of opium plus chemicals to produce a kilogram of the more potent drug. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Myanmar’s opium production boomed with average annual yields of 1,000 tons or more. Until now, high Chinese demand has driven Myanmar’s illicit bumper crops. According to statistics compiled by Chin Ko-lin and Sheldon Zhang, two US-based academics and experts on the Golden Triangle drug trade, China had 1,545,000 registered drug addicts in 2010, with 1,065,000 of those addicted to heroin. The actual figure, as most addicts are not registered with the government, could have been as many as 4-5 million, according to other independent researchers...''