Golden Triangle

The Golden Triangle is one of Asia's two main illicit opium-producing areas. It is an area of around 350,000 square kilometers that overlaps the mountains of four countries of Southeast Asia: Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. (Other interpretations of the Golden Triangle also include a section of Yunnan Province, China.)

Along with Afghanistan in the Golden Crescent (together with Iran and Pakistan), it has been one of the most extensive opium-producing areas of Asia and of the world since the 1950s. The Golden Triangle also designates the confluence of the Sop Ruak River and the Mekong river, since the term has been appropriated by the Thai tourist industry to describe the nearby junction of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar.

Opium and morphine base produced in northeastern Burma are transported by horse and donkey caravans to refineries along the Thailand-Burma border for conversion to heroin and heroin base. Most of the finished products are shipped across the border into various towns in North Thailand and down to Bangkok for further distribution to international markets. In the past major Thai Chinese and Burmese Chinese traffickers in Bangkok have controlled much of the foreign sales and movement of Southeast Asian heroin from Thailand, but a combination of law enforcement pressure, publicity and a regional drought has significantly reduced their role. As a consequence, many less-predominant traffickers in Bangkok and other parts of Thailand now control smaller quantities of the heroin going to international markets.