“The mystique may remain, and the geography will be celebrated in the future by novelists,” said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN anti-drug agency, in an interview. “But from our vantage point, we see a region that is rapidly moving towards an opium-free status.”
The Golden Triangle has been eclipsed by the Golden Crescent – the poppy-growing area in and around Afghanistan that is now the source of an estimated 92 percent of the world’s opium, according to the United Nations, which bases its statistics on satellite imagery of poppy fields.