The recent discovery of two huge methamphetamine laboratories in Cambodia has led to fears that the country is becoming a major regional center of illegal drug production and consumption. Authorities say that tougher anti-drug programs in neighboring countries have led some major drug producers to shift production to Cambodia. Rory Byrne reports for VOA from Phnom Penh.

This methamphetamine lab is the largest discovered in Cambodia

Police say the lab was used to manufacture and test new generations of increasingly potent illegal drugs.

Another so-called super-lab recently discovered in Kompong Speu province, west of Phnom Penh, was used to make the raw materials needed to produce methamphetamines.

Police say they discovered almost four tons of drug-producing chemicals, enough to make hundreds of thousands of pills.

Lars Pederson

The U.N. says 60 percent of the world's 25 million methamphetamine users are living in Asia. Eighty percent of those are under 26 years of age.

In the past, drug enforcement officials say traffickers used Cambodia solely as a transit point. Most drugs came down the Mekong River from Burma and Laos into Cambodia en route to Thailand and Vietnam. Some got shipped further to Australia, the U.S. and Europe.

Pedersen says that the recent discoveries of production facilities in Cambodia reflect a growing drug problem in the region. "It's part of a worsening trend in general in the region," he says. "But trafficking in Cambodia is also influenced -- trafficking and production for that matter -- is also influenced by the crackdowns in Thailand, by a tougher policy in Thailand and in China for that matter, also. So it's a matter for traffickers, producers, to find alternatives and this country is a very attractive alternative."

Robert Bruce

Pedersen says methamphetamines made in Cambodia pose a threat to all countries. "We should not forget that it affects all of the rest of the world because drug production in the magnitude that we see here is not only intended for the Cambodian market, it is intended for the world market."

U.N. officials say that greater cooperation between law enforcement and government officials in the region is needed if the threat from illegal amphetamines is to be contained.