The UNODC Global SMART Programme Regional Workshop for East and Southeast Asia was held from 13 to 15 December 2022 in Bangkok, Thailand, in a hybrid format. The UNODC Global SMART programme was launched by the UNODC as a response to the synthetic drug problem in 2008 and has been operated successfully, based on the active participation of its members. As a part of this programme, the annual regional workshop has been held to gather officials working in the field of drugs, and to exchange information on the national and regional drug situations, as well as efforts undertaken to tackle the drug problem.

This year, around 60 participants joined the meeting from various countries/regions including international agencies. During the meeting, participants shared information on the situation in their countries/regions through presentations about evolving synthetic drug market and the safe handling and disposal of chemicals. In addition, there was a field trip to look around and listen to the expertise of the Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB), which was a great chance to learn how to detect illegal drugs and work process of the analysis laboratory.

At the beginning of the meeting, the RILO AP made two presentations, which were titled “RILO AP Anti-Drug Projects” and “Operation Mekong Dragon”. In the presentation of RILO AP Anti-Drug Projects, it introduced the on-going anti-drug project, namely DSINS, explaining the RILO AP’s roles, CENcomm platforms, information sharing procedures, as well as the result of the project in the past five years. Besides, it compared UNODC World Drug Report and WCO CEN statistics to discuss similarities and differences in seizure status.

Then, RILO AP continued to give a presentation about Operation Mekong Dragon. In the presentation, it showed an overview of the operation, status of participating members, detection trends, comparison of detection rates by drug type, smuggling route trends, concealment method analysis, detection techniques, ratio by customs clearance stage, introduction of major seizure cases, etc.