"Despite the negative consequences, we made the decision to cultivate [opium] due to our lack of understanding about sustainable crops like coffee, and long-term market trends."
"You have to look at opium — before it gets to heroin — as really a poverty issue; it's produced by poor rural farmers, heavily clustered in certain parts of the country, mainly in Shan State,"Mr Douglas said.
"Thailand is seizing hundreds of millions of pills a year, and tons and tons of crystal methamphetamine,"he said.
"It's causing more groups to get more active in it, they're capitalising on the moment, they're taking advantage of the instability to produce more synthetic drugs, and now it's forcing the poor back into drug production."