ISLAMABAD: Law enforcement officials in Europe suspect that criminals are tapping into South Asian countries’ relatively advanced pharmaceutical industries to get their hands on methamphetamine’s two main ingredients: ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. The drug is more valuable than heroin, and some say, more addictive.

Drug cartels are thriving off the weak governance and law enforcement that have long fuelled the region’s heroin trade, the officials believe.

Highlighting this scourge are UN figures claiming that the number of meth labs uncovered in Iran rose from two to 166 in three years, while the supply of precursor chemicals in Pakistan has more than tripled over roughly the same period.

A Supreme Court case in Pakistan involving the prime minister’s son has drawn more attention to the problem. The case revolves around two Pakistani pharmaceutical companies that allegedly used political connections to obtain huge amounts of ephedrine and are suspected of diverting it to people in the drug trade who could have used it to make meth worth billions of dollars. The companies have denied any wrongdoing.

Ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are used to make common cold medicine, but either can also be used to manufacture meth easily at home or, in places like Mexico where the trade is most advanced, in huge labs indistinguishable from those of large pharmaceutical companies.

The greater South Asia region has a long history of drug manufacturing, but most of it has involved opium and heroin. But as governments elsewhere clamp down on the availability of the precursor chemicals, this region is attracting more dealers, said Matt Nice of the Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board, which enforces UN conventions regulating the manufacture and distribution of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine.

They look for a country with weak security and regulation “where you can obtain the chemicals because no one is paying attention, or it has never been a problem before”, he added.

Iranian police dismantled 166 meth labs in 2010, up from just two in 2008, according to the UN. Labs have also been dismantled in Sri Lanka and India, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of precursor chemicals.

Worldwide, nearly 10,200 meth labs were seized in 2009, the most recent aggregate data available, according to the UN. Most were small labs dismantled in the US. But the number of labs outside the US has increased significantly in recent years.

There are up to 21 million amphetamine users in East and Southeast Asia, out of a total high-end estimate of 56 million worldwide, according to the United Nations. Nearly half of all people seeking drug treatment in East and Southeast Asia in 2009 were methamphetamine users.

“There are indications meth is being produced in Pakistan,” said Jeremy Douglas, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Pakistan. “It makes sense because the supply of the precursors is high, readily available and cheap.”

The chemicals are also being smuggled out of Pakistan to Iran and other countries.

Iran reported significant seizures of ephedrine originating from Pakistan and Syria — 294 kilograms (648 pounds) in 2010 and 375 kilograms (827 pounds) in 2011, the UN said. Pakistan also seized 265 kilograms (584 pounds) of ephedrine in provinces bordering Iran in 2010.

Last year, Pakistan also intercepted 245 kilograms (540 pounds) of ephedrine at Karachi port, bound for Australia hidden in spice packages, said the UN.

About 1.5 kilograms (3 pounds) of ephedrine or pseudoephedrine are needed to make 1 kilogram (2 pound) of meth. A single gram (0.04 ounces) of meth can fetch more than $1,000 in Japan, according to the UN. Nice, the UN drug control official, said ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are often smuggled in pill form, and the smugglers mislabel the merchandise as something innocuous, like vitamins, to elude law enforcement in countries with little experience of meth.

“Once they do start seeing this stuff, you have to ask yourself how long has this been going on and how much bigger is it?” said Nice.

Smuggling may be peanuts compared with the amount of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine that is being acquired in bulk from pharmaceutical companies in the region and diverted to drug cartels through front companies — the kind of deception that is suspected in the case before the Supreme Court. Most countries, including South Asian ones, are signatories to UN agreements that require them to report their ephedrine and pseudoephedrine needs to the International Narcotics Control Board each year.—AP