According to a UN investigation, drug traffickers have discovered new ways to export crystal methamphetamine, also known as ice, from South East Asia to wealthy buyers outside the region.
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To avoid detection by land patrols in Thailand and China, criminal organizations are transporting more drugs by sea.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, they have learned "to anticipate, adapt, and try to circumvent" police enforcement.
Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, and South Korea all sell the ice.
The UN agency cautioned that the massive traffic in methamphetamines and other illegal narcotics, which largely come from super labs in some areas of Myanmar, is also not showing any signs of slowing down.
Many people think that Shan State in Myanmar is where the greatest meth trade takes place. The Golden Triangle, or the borders of Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, is where drug traffickers export their products.
"In 2022, we saw them work around Thai borders more than in the past," said Jeremy Douglas, the regional representative for the UN agency.
Traffickers have continued to move substantial amounts of product through Laos and northern Thailand, but they have also moved a sizable amount of material through central Myanmar to the Andaman Sea, where it appears that few people were searching.
Meth occurs in two major forms: highly addictive yaba tablets or crystal meth (ice).
Chinese and Thai police have both increased their operations in the Golden Triangle in recent years, supported by authorities from the surrounding countries.
To deliver high-value crystal meth to a third country, such as Australia or New Zealand, where the drug's street value may be ten times higher than in Bangkok, criminal gangs utilize Thailand as a transit country.
According to the research, large amounts of Myanmar meth are also entering Bangladesh and India.
Drug seizures have significantly decreased over the past year, according to Thai and Chinese police.
Nearly 151 tonnes of methamphetamine were recovered by police in East and South East Asia in 2022, down from a record 172 tonnes in 2021.
However, the cost of 1kg (2.2 lbs) of crystal meth is at an all-time low, suggesting that there are still plenty of supplies available.
According to authorities, drug trafficking groups have discovered ways to "diversify" their networks and transport the drugs via other maritime channels. Agents of the Thai drug enforcement agency are successful in stopping some of the supplies at sea.
After a four-month pursuit of drug traffickers, Thai officials earlier this week discovered more than 900kg of crystal meth on board a trawler in the Gulf of Thailand, around 32 kilometers (20 miles) from the popular tourist island of Samed. The operation resulted in the arrest of six crew members.
Officers claimed that the smaller Thai boat would have transferred the cocaine to a larger trawler, which would have most likely transported the drugs to Australia.
Additionally, in 2022, authorities in the area confiscated a record 27.4 tonnes of ketamine, an anesthetic that is sometimes used recreationally as a party drug. The increase over 2021 is 167%.
One ketamine production facility in Cambodia was singled out in the study as having "industrial scale" capacity.
The fact that Cambodia had turned into "a key transit and to some extent production point for the regional drug trade" was also a cause for concern, according to the report.
The report stated that "alarm bells have gone off in the area with the discovery of a series of clandestine ketamine laboratories, processing warehouses, and storage facilities across the country."
