Burma’s government destroyed 5,953 hectares of opium poppy fields during the last growing season of 2013, government mouthpiece The New Light of Myanmar reports. In October, authorities destroyed the poppy in 16 townships in Shan and Karen states. Most of the poppy was removed in Shan State’s Hsihseng, Hopong, Pinlaung and Pekhon townships, where officials destroyed a total of 4,516 hectares of poppy. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime warned in a report earlier this year that the area under poppy cultivation in Burma in 2012 had increased by 17 percent compared with 2011, to reach about 51,000 hectares.