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Opium cultivation in Southeast Asia's main poppy-growing countries has more than doubled over the past six years driven largely by rising heroin demand in China and despite recent efforts by regional governments to eradicate the crop, the United Nations' narcotics office said in a report released Wednesday.

The report's figures show a resurgence in poppy cultivation in Southeast Asia's notorious Golden Triangle—an area where parts of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand converge—that abuts southern China. It is one of the world's two main opium-producing regions, the other being the Golden Crescent across Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

In Myanmar, the increase in illicit drug production comes despite recent political and economic reforms in the country—which as the world's second-largest grower of poppy after Afghanistan accounts for a quarter of global cultivation—and risks reversing inroads made in a 13-year effort to eliminate opium there. The planted areas are extremely rugged and often controlled by insurgents turned traffickers.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 30862.html

With the monetary yields of opium crops about 15 times as high as other cash crops, the plant has remained a far more compelling livelihood for many farmers, who live on steep hillsides and often lack means to get other crops to market.