"There's an increasingly serious problem in amphetamines in Southeast Asia because they do not require any agricultural production," said Akira Fujino, who heads the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime in Bangkok, Thailand. "All you need to do is get the starting materials and then any urban laboratory can be established anywhere in the world, small or otherwise big factories."

China and Myanmar are the world's largest producers of amphetamine-class drugs, he noted, but illicit production is increasing in nations like the Philippines and Fiji. Meth labs destroyed in 2003 in the Philippines accounted for 10 percent of the drug seized worldwide that year.

Opium production in Southeast Asia has declined 78 percent since 1996, according to the U.N.

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