KUALA LUMPUR: There has been no drastic rise in cannabis use among drug addicts in the country even with the Thai government allowing the use of cannabis in the country.

National Anti-Drugs Agency (NADA) director-general Sutekno Ahmad Belon said the agency along with other enforcement agencies, including the Royal Malaysian Police and the Malaysian Royal Customs Department frequently monitor the country's borders to ensure Malaysians do not own or take such drugs after visiting Thailand.

"So far, no such high spike even though Thailand has allowed the use of cannabis and no increase in general use in our country," he told reporters after the 43rd ASEAN Senior Officials' Meeting on Drugs here today that was officiated by Home Ministry secretary-general Datuk Seri Wan Ahmad Dahlan Abdul Aziz.

He said synthetic drug use was much higher compared to cannabis in Malaysia currently.

In June, Thailand became the first Asian country to remove cannabis from its narcotics list and to allow the public to plant it at home.

Meanwhile, Wan Ahmad Dahlan said in his keynote address that in the past five years, almost 20,000 metric tons of illicit drugs were seized within the ASEAN member states, with an average seizure of over 3,800 metric tons annually.

He said cannabis was the most common illicit drug seized, followed by New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) and Amphetamine Type Stimulants (ATS).

Wan Ahmad Dahlan said more than 2.3 million ASEAN drugs users received treatment within the ASEAN member states in the past five years, 63.6 per cent of them being new drug users.

He said the ASEAN drug monitoring report showed that in the last year alone, a total of 585,695 drug users in the ASEAN countries received treatment, an increase of 8.3 per cent compared to 2020.

"Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, drug users' access to treatment within ASEAN increased by 36.1per cent since 2019," he added.

-- BERNAMA