Burma's opium problem
Drug adddicts are surrounded by discarded dirty needles and syringes at a cemetery in Nampatka village, northeastern Shan State, Burma, Jan 28, 2014.
Every morning, more than 100 heroin and opium addicts descend on the graveyard to get high. Some junkies lean on white tombstones, tossing dirty needles and syringes into the dry, golden grass. Others squat on the ground, sucking from crude pipes fashioned from plastic water bottles.
Together with other opium-growing regions of Burma, the village of Nampakta has seen an astonishing breakdown of law and order since generals from the formerly military-run country handed power to a nominally civilian government three years ago.
The drug trade - and addiction - is running wild along the jagged frontier. In this village, roughly half the population uses.
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Flourishing poppy fields spread over hills in Nampatka village, Northern Shan State, Burma, Jan 27, 2014.
An infantry army base and several police posts overlook waves of white and pink poppies in full bloom on both sides of the dusty road leading to Nampakta, blanketing the sloping valleys and jagged peaks as far as the eye can see.
Burma, now emerging from a half-century of brutal military rule, was the world's biggest producer of opium, the main ingredient in heroin, until 2002, when focus started shifting to the manufacture of methamphetamines, now a booming trade in itself.
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Hpatau Ma Hkang, a volunteer who was addicted to heroin for 30 years before his rehabilitation in 2013, carries two-year-old boy Tsaw Tsaw, Jan. 28 2014.
The boy's parents are both going through a drug addiction rehabilitation program run by the Kachin Baptist Community at Nampatka Village.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimates the country produced 870 tons of opium last year, a 26 percent increase over 2012 and the highest figure recorded in a decade. During the same period, drug eradication efforts plunged.
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Daw Li weeps before the graves of her two oldest sons, both victims of heroin overdoses, in Nampatka village cemetery, Jan. 28, 2014.
Residents once hoped new political and economic reforms sweeping their country would bring change to the wild hinterlands. Instead, many say their lives have only gotten worse as local authorities’ complicity and neglect have enabled a spiraling drug trade.
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Daw Li, standing between the graves of two of her children, positions a dried floral arrangement at her eldest son, Lasham Brang Seng’s grave in Nampatka village cemetery, Jan. 28, 2014.
Both boys died of heroin overdoses.
"It's all in the open now," Daw Li said, wiping tears from her cheeks. "The dealers deal, the junkies shoot up. They could care less if someone is watching. Why isn't anyone trying to stop this?"
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Young drug addicts watch television at a drug rehabilitation center run by the Kachin Baptist Community in Nampatka Village, Jan. 28, 2014.
Many residents said they are sick of seeing their community ripped apart by drugs, though growing opium is one of the few ways people can make money in impoverished rural areas of Myanmar such as this.
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Young drug addicts gather outdoors for morning tea at a drug rehabilitation center run by the Kachin Baptist Community in Nampatka Village, Jan. 28, 2014.
"Every family is affected," said Yaw Htung, Nampakta's village administrator.
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A villager walks in a flourishing poppy field at Nampatka village, Jan. 27, 2014.
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