Use of drugs in the gold mining areas of Myanmar in Kachin state has hit an alarming high. Drug traffickers are aided and abetted by mine owners. Drug packed condoms are carried by women to smuggle it to miners. The nexus all around is entrenched.

Those dealing in drugs face no obstacles in touching lives of gold miners with drugs. Access is made easy and they can sell drugs freely with the active encouragement of mine owners, reports appearing in the Myanmar media in exile suggest. As such there has been an alarming rise in drug intake.


There is a pattern to the whole business of drug trafficking and the excessive use of drugs by the miners labouring all day in adverse climatic conditions and a polluted environment. There is a belief among workers and miners in Myanmar that intake of drugs increase the capacity to work shooing away fatigue born of long hours of work.

More importantly, even if the workers cannot afford to buy the quantum of drugs they would like to buy, help is at hand. In the gold mining areas, gold mine owners, flush with money, are known to encourage workers to chase drugs. Some owners are known to give their miners 1,000 Kyat a day to buy drugs to ensure loyalty so that miners do not drift to other areas. But the handouts by the employers are not always enough for the miners who dip into their own pockets to buy more of the addictive stuff.


Hukawng Valley, dubbed the 'Valley of Darkness' in a report by the Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG) in 2007, has come out with a strange phenomenon. The report points out that gold mine owners do not allow their miners to drink alcohol but allow them to use opium, the media reports. It could have much to do with the perception that drugs reduce fatigue whereas alcohol would lead to intoxication affecting productivity in the mines.


Drug dealers as such make the most of this situation. Here too startling facts have been revealed on how drug dealers transport drugs to the gold mining areas from Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state. Women are used as carriers. The women are told to carry the drugs packed in condoms. Before crossing the check points manned by the military to cross over to the mining areas, the women insert the condoms inside their vagina. Needles to say the troops manning the check points are in cahoots with the drug dealers.