International and national officials have doubted the accuracy of a drug report recently released by the United States' State Department, local media said on Monday.
In its 2007 global drug report issued on Friday and based on estimations from the World Health Organization (WHO), the department noted that the amount of methamphetamine tablets illegally imported to Cambodia is more than 50 million per year, or 150,000 a day, of which 50,000 are consumed in Phnom Penh.
Graham Shaw, technical officer at the WHO office in Phnom Penh, questioned the report's accuracy, explaining that the statistics are not from his institution, but from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), English newspaper the Cambodian Daily reported.
Phauly Tea, a project officer at UNODC, said that his office reported the statistics, but it did so four or five years ago as a result of a very informal assessment, the paper said.
"There was no formal investigation. It's based on discussions with local law enforcement officials," he said.
According to the report, Cambodia had over 24,000 drug consumers in 2004, while Pauly Tea suggested that the country should have 65,000 abusers in 2006.
Meanwhile, the report said that the plantation of marijuana still exists in spite of large scale campaigns to destroy marijuana on the part of the Royal Government of Cambodia, and at the same time, there is involvement by soldiers and police in growing marijuana on a large scale.
But the National Authority for Combating Drugs said that it had destroyed 143.3 square meters of marijuana fields in 2006, which the authority regarded as a success in eliminating illegal cultivation and traffic of the drug, reported French-language daily newspaper the Cambodge Soir.
In addition, according to the report, heroin and methamphetamine are smuggled into Cambodia through the northern provinces of Stung Treng and Preah Vihear, which is near one of the world's most infamous drug zones, the Golden Triangle.
The Cambodian authorities managed to confiscate nearly 430,000 or 0.8 percent of the smuggled methamphetamine tablets in 2006, it added.
However, it said, despite a big gap between the drugs confiscated and its actual figures, the confiscation has increased over the past years, with last year's confiscated methamphetamines 26 percent higher than 2005 and doubling compared to 2004.
"This reflects a noticeable increase in drug trafficking, and there are perhaps some improvements in law enforcement," it added.
Source: Xinhua
In its 2007 global drug report issued on Friday and based on estimations from the World Health Organization (WHO), the department noted that the amount of methamphetamine tablets illegally imported to Cambodia is more than 50 million per year, or 150,000 a day, of which 50,000 are consumed in Phnom Penh.
Graham Shaw, technical officer at the WHO office in Phnom Penh, questioned the report's accuracy, explaining that the statistics are not from his institution, but from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), English newspaper the Cambodian Daily reported.
Phauly Tea, a project officer at UNODC, said that his office reported the statistics, but it did so four or five years ago as a result of a very informal assessment, the paper said.
"There was no formal investigation. It's based on discussions with local law enforcement officials," he said.
According to the report, Cambodia had over 24,000 drug consumers in 2004, while Pauly Tea suggested that the country should have 65,000 abusers in 2006.
Meanwhile, the report said that the plantation of marijuana still exists in spite of large scale campaigns to destroy marijuana on the part of the Royal Government of Cambodia, and at the same time, there is involvement by soldiers and police in growing marijuana on a large scale.
But the National Authority for Combating Drugs said that it had destroyed 143.3 square meters of marijuana fields in 2006, which the authority regarded as a success in eliminating illegal cultivation and traffic of the drug, reported French-language daily newspaper the Cambodge Soir.
In addition, according to the report, heroin and methamphetamine are smuggled into Cambodia through the northern provinces of Stung Treng and Preah Vihear, which is near one of the world's most infamous drug zones, the Golden Triangle.
The Cambodian authorities managed to confiscate nearly 430,000 or 0.8 percent of the smuggled methamphetamine tablets in 2006, it added.
However, it said, despite a big gap between the drugs confiscated and its actual figures, the confiscation has increased over the past years, with last year's confiscated methamphetamines 26 percent higher than 2005 and doubling compared to 2004.
"This reflects a noticeable increase in drug trafficking, and there are perhaps some improvements in law enforcement," it added.
Source: Xinhua
1 comment:
Hey Khmeng wat Khnong Srok, where have you been doing? We haven't heard from you for a long time. Are you OK, Amigo?
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