YANGON: Myanmar police arrested 277 drug traffickers last month, state media reported on Wednesday, as the world’s second-largest opium producer sought to show it was cracking down on the narcotics trade.

The New Light of Myanmar newspaper said authorities also seized more than 50 kgs of opium, 2.32 kgs of heroin, 120,000 stimulant tablets, and chemicals used to make drugs.

“Action was taken against 277 — 210 men and 67 women — in 192 drug-related cases in December 2008,” the junta-run paper said.

Myanmar’s mountainous and lawless border regions once hid vast poppy fields which fed most of the world’s opium habit well into the 1990s. Under pressure from governments including close ally China, Myanmar eventually began a campaign in the 1990s to eradicate the crop, and soon Afghanistan took over as the world’s top opium producer.—AFP