BANGKOK: Despite record levels of seizures across East and Southeast Asia last year, the illegal synthetic drugs industry is thriving and growing, according to new regional findings.Methamphetamine seizures reached 349 tonnes in 2025 - a 48 per cent increase from the previous year and more than five times the amount seized a decade ago - according to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released last Friday (Jun 12).The seizure of ketamine also soared 185 per cent from 2024 reaching 52.5 tonnes in 2025.Experts tell CNA the significance is not the seizures themselves but that despite record enforcement activity, supply appears stronger than ever.
“Authorities may be catching more drugs, but traffickers are producing even more,” said Nualnoi Treerat, an economist and director of the Institute of Asian Studies at Chulalongkorn University.As production capacity, trafficking networks and demand expand, the market for synthetic drugs is not contracting, but rather consolidating and expanding into new areas, the report, titled Synthetic Drugs in East and Southeast Asia: Latest Developments and Challenges 2026, found. It is a reflection of the scope and influence of organised criminal networks with aggressive expansion strategies, mainly based in Southeast Asia, and the lack of impact of law enforcement action, Inshik Sim, a lead analyst at the UNODC Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific who helped produce the report, told CNA.“Seizure data, of course, represents law enforcement success, but at the same time, is more driven by supply,” he said.“And increased supply clearly tells us that law enforcement action itself is not the only measure to deal with this. The indicator for success would be increases in the price of drugs, but I don't see that happening.”UNODC found that crystal meth prices continued to decline across key Southeast Asian markets. Myanmar remains the cheapest market in the region, with retail prices falling from US$6 per gram to US$5.55 per gram in 2025.Thailand experienced one of the sharpest declines, from US$20 per gram to US$13.50 per gram in a single year, while Indonesia saw prices drop more than 40 per cent, from roughly US$134 per gram to US$79 per gram.The ketamine market largely mirrors that for methamphetamine.
