Myanmar 2nd largest opium producer

Myanmar remains the world's second-largest producer of opium poppies, but its share has dropped from 55 percent in 1998 to just over 5 percent a decade later, a global U.S. State Department report said Friday.

The report said despite the reductions, the Myanmar government still failed to reach full compliance with its international anti-drug commitments.

"This large proportional decrease is due to both decreased opium poppy cultivation in Burma and increased cultivation in Afghanistan," the report said, referring to Myanmar by its other name. The report identified Afghanistan, where farmers illegally grew record amounts of the plant in 2007, as far and away the largest supplier to the world's addicts with 93 percent of the crop.

Thanks to a 10-year reduction plan undertaken by Myanmar's ruling junta in 1998, production had fallen to just 5 percent of the world's supply by 2006 but moved slightly higher last year, the report said.

Thus, the report said, "The Golden Triangle region in Southeast Asia no longer reigns as the world's largest opium poppy cultivating region."

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