The number of international drug criminal gangs has escalated in Vietnam in recent years, especially those originating from Africa.
The African drug criminal gangs include many illegal immigrants who often seduce women from Vietnam and other neigbouring countries to smuggle drugs into Vietnam or export them to other countries.
Drug smugglers often conduct their activities at border routes in the northwest, the north-central, and southern areas of Vietnam.
Notably, the amount of traded contraband heroin in Vietnam in 2009 went up 27% compared with the same period of last year and the amount of contraband methamphetamine went up 11 times.
On May 12, a high level meeting among signatories of the "Agreement on Drug Prevention and Control Cooperation in the Mekong Sub-region", signed in 1993, was launched officially in Da Nang City, Vietnam. Attending the event were representatives from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in South East Asia and the Pacific, from member countries of Mekong sub-region and leaders of Da Nang City.
The high level meeting in Da Nang City
As part of the meeting, delegates discussed outcomes in the prevention and fight against drugs in each country and shared the experiences in dealing with the issue, as well as enhancing the efficiency of multileteral and billeteral coordination regimes in the region and forecasting new developments of drug criminals in the future with an aim of providing the most appropriate and effective polices and solutions.
Drug criminals took advantage of increasing development of the chemical industry to produce illegal drugs.
In addition to Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines where many drug manufacturing factories have been found; there is a growing number of illegal drug producers in Cambodia and China.