Getting higher.

Byline: Jamil Majid

STANDING sentinel over one of Myanmar's main border crossings to China, in the town of Mongla, is a lurid pink building, the Drug Eradication Museum. The sleazy frontier post, Chinese in all but name, is at the heart of the Golden Triangle, where the three South-East Asian countries of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos adjoin their giant northern neighbour.

It is an area that has long been synonymous with one thing: drugs. At the museum the authorities have chosen to portray how the cultivation of opium poppies and the production of heroin and other drugs shrivelled in the face of a determined eradication programme. Dog-eared black-and-white photos record all the diplomats and foreign journalists coming to witness the triumphant destruction of thousands of hectares of poppy fields.

Here and there among the exhibits Myanmar's then military dictator, Than Shwe, descends by helicopter to survey the good work. But the chronicle of relentless success ends in 2006. Beyond the museum walls since then, and particularly recently, it has been a different story.

According to the latest report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), drug cultivation, production and use is now rising at the steepest rate in years. In 2013 poppy cultivation in Myanmar rose by 13% on the previous year, to 57,800 hectares (143,000 acres).

This is well over double the total acreage in 2006, the year with the lowest level of cultivation. The combination of more cultivation and higher yields has resulted in a rise of over a quarter in opium production in Myanmar just since 2012, to some 870 tonnes, "the highest since assessments by UNODC and the government began". This quantity is worth about $500m-quite a lot in such a poor country. Cultivation has also increased, albeit more modestly and from a much lower base, across the border in Laos. Overall, whereas in 2005 the two countries produced 326 tonnes of opium, or 7% of that year's world total, last year they produced 893 tonnes, or 18% of the total. Afghanistan continues to produce the lion's share. But having been overtaken by the Afghans as long ago as 1991, the Burmese are making inroads again.

Other trends are also worrying. Despite decades of official attempts involving America, China and various UN agencies to lure the hill farmers of Shan state away from cultivating poppies, the region accounts for more than nine-tenths of Myanmar's poppy harvest. An estimated 200,000 households have resisted the...