The Asian synthetic drug industry continued to expand in 2025, the United Nations said this week, with seizures of methamphetamine and ketamine both jumping to new all-time highs.
In its annual report on the Asian synthetic drug market, released yesterday, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that methamphetamine seizures spiked to 349 tons in East and Southeast Asia in 2025, a 48 percent increase over last year’s record of 236 tons. Ketamine seizures also shattered the previous record, jumping by 185 percent year-on-year, to 52.5 tons.
“Record seizures of both methamphetamine and ketamine in the same year are a sign that the underlying drivers of the regional drug trafficking trade remain firmly in place,” Delphine Schantz, the UNODC’s regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said in a statement accompanying the report’s release.
“As production capacity, trafficking networks, and demand expand, it is clear that the market is not contracting, but rather consolidating and expanding into new areas,” she added.
As in previous years, the majority – 94 percent – of methamphetamine seizures occurred in Southeast Asia, “highlighting the immense volume of methamphetamine trafficked through land-based and maritime routes in Southeast Asia,” according to the report.
Most of this emanated from Myanmar’s Shan State, where “the presence of organized crime and non-state armed groups involved in illicit activities,” as well as proximity to Chinese and Southeast Asian drug and precursor markets, has created conditions conducive to the expansion of synthetic drug production. The UNODC once again noted that this trade has been facilitated by the instability and conflict that have gripped Myanmar since the 2021 coup.
Following up on a trend noted in last year’s report, the UNODC pointed to a growing convergence between drug trafficking operations and other criminal enterprises, particularly Southeast Asia’s giant online scamming centers. It noted the seizure by Myanmar authorities in January of “a cluster of industrial-scale facilities that were manufacturing methamphetamine and other drugs” in two townships in northern Shan State. One of these was operating in “close physical proximity” to a suspected scam site equipped with equipment, including Starlink terminals and laptop computers.
According to the UNODC, this points to “potential cross-investment between illicit drug production, Southeast Asia’s scam industry, and the wider illicit economy.” Shantz said that “the illicit economy in this region is becoming more integrated and diversified, and the drug trade is both driving that expansion and being fueled by it.”
As in 2024, last year saw intensified trafficking of meth via maritime routes, which are “used for both domestic distribution and transit trafficking to third countries,” and the year saw record maritime seizures in Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, and the Philippines.
Among these was the June 2025 seizure of around 2.4 tons of crystal methamphetamine in Thailand’s Rayong province, which was confiscated by Thai police as it was being loaded aboard a 90-ton tourist vessel. This came just weeks after authorities in Indonesia seized a cargo ship near Batam Island. They found 2.1 tons of crystal meth on board, which officials from the country’s anti-drug agency described as the “biggest drug discovery in the history of drug eradication in Indonesia.” The report also noted other significant maritime seizures in Myanmar, Malaysia, and the northern Philippines.
Despite these seizures, the UNODC noted, traffickers have begun using a diversity of watercraft, including “foreign tankers and cargo ships, fishing vessels, tourist vessels, and ferry-linked domestic transport,” in an attempt to evade maritime law enforcement efforts.
One other notable development in 2025 was the expansion of Asia’s ketamine market. Most of the seizures of the drug took place in Malaysia and Myanmar, which together accounted for just under 60 percent of the regional total. This was driven in part by growing ketamine production in mainland Southeast Asia – again, mostly in Myanmar.
While the UNODC said that the reasons for this rise are not fully clear, the available evidence suggests that ketamine use “may be rapidly expanding in some countries, including Cambodia, Thailand, and Viet Nam.”
It noted that multiple East and Southeast Asian countries also reported seizures of ketamine sourced from European countries, suggesting an increasing connection between the two regions.
“Europe and Southeast Asia are no longer distant points on separate drug maps,” Inshik Sim, an analyst at the UNODC Regional Office for South-East Asia and the Pacific, said in the agency’s statement. “They are increasingly connected and addressing this reality requires coordinated intelligence and enforcement responses that span both regions.”
