The drug economy is intertwined with other illegal activities and armed conflict, says the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The UN agency has launched its World Drug Report for 2024.
Ghada Waly, Executive Director of UNODC, said: “At this pivotal time for drug-related challenges around the globe, governments and all stakeholders need to be equipped through data and evidence to inform responses and galvanise action – and that is the role of the World Drug Report.”
In a foreword to the document, she said: “Organized criminal groups are exploiting instability and gaps in the rule of law to expand their drug trafficking operations, while damaging fragile ecosystems and perpetuating other forms of organized crime such as human trafficking. Cocaine production is reaching record highs, with production climbing in Latin America, coupled with drug use and markets expanding in Europe, Africa, and Asia.”
Her foreword and the report called for more ‘strategic’ justice interventions that target the illicit drug market, rather than the users. “Justice responses must focus on the top-level actors that are critical in fuelling the drug trade, looking to hold traffickers accountable while helping drug users with treatment,” she said.
As for geography, the report points to the tri-border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, where drug traffickers ‘capitalize on the porous borders, engaging in money-laundering and the smuggling of drugs and counterfeit goods. Similarly, the Golden Triangle, spanning the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar and Thailand, is a hub for opium and synthetic drug production and, more recently, wildlife trafficking and illicit resource extraction’. Due to a drastic decrease in opium production in Afghanistan in 2023 (by 95 per cent from 2022) and despite an increase in Myanmar (by 36 per cent), global opium production fell by 74 per cent in 2023.
The purity of heroin on the market is expected to decline, leading to an increase in purity-adjusted heroin prices, according to the report. As for cocaine, global supply reached a record high in 2022, with more than 2,700 tons of cocaine produced that year, 20 per cent more than in the previous year, and 355,000 hectares under coca bush cultivation. The main cocaine trafficking flows continue to run from the Andean region to other countries in the Americas and to western and central Europe, as the second largest cocaine market after North America; although cocaine reaches all regions. North Sea ports are consolidating their position as the main entry point to Europe’s cocaine market.
In the past decade, Africa has been increasingly used as a transit area for cocaine trafficked from Latin America to Europe, via West and North Africa. As a result of a ‘spill-over effect’ on local markets, cocaine is also emerging as a harmful drug in Africa, the UNODC says.
As for synthetic drugs, such as methamphetamines and opioids, that have shorter production times and no fixed geography compared with plant-based drugs, the report says wastewater data for Europe suggest a modest fall in methamphetamine consumption in 2023, after several years of a steady upward trend. Ketamine consumption is increasing in western and central Europe, where a rise in ketamine loads in wastewater was observed in 12 out of 15 cities that were monitored in 2022 and 2023. Globally, while nearly a third of people who use cannabis, cocaine or heroin are women; the share of women is nearly equal to men when it comes to the non-medical use of pharmaceutical drugs, in particular opioids, sedatives and tranquillisers, and stimulants.
Among speakers on a panel at the launch event at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) were Camelia Abdelgelil, Data Science for Public Policy Master of Public Administration Candidate, at the London School of Economics.
You can view the report at the UNODC website.
