Myanmar’s betel chewers swallowing hard at high prices

For millions of people in the Southeast Asian country, the day is incomplete without chewing the juicy, teeth-staining parcels of betel leaf wrapped around areca nut and a slake of lime.

[...] Myanmar’s dedicated legions of red-toothed betel nut chewers are now having to swallow hard — at the thought of paying double for what’s known as kun-ya, thanks to extreme weather that has caused a sharp spike in prices of the ingredients for the addictive stimulant.

Nowhere is the poor harvest more greatly felt than in Thanphyuyone, a village where every morning farmers pick mature leaves that are lined inside bamboo baskets and sent to wholesale markets in nearby Yangon, the country’s commercial capital.

The extreme weather variations have been blamed on El Niño, a warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide.

Great red streams of the juice line sidewalks, bus stops, walls, public restrooms and everywhere else.

A recent Health Ministry and World Health Organization survey showed that 62 percent of men and 24 percent of women in Myanmar use smokeless tobacco products such as kun-ya, carrying a serious risk of oral cancer.