Ukraine and Afghanistan in focus: Drug use on the rise, according to UN drug report

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the number of people using drugs increased by 2011 percent between 2021 and 23. According to the report, UNODC is monitoring the situation in Ukraine in particular.

According to a UN report, the global number of drug users has risen by almost a quarter within a decade.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna also expressed concern about the spread of synthetic drugs and trouble spots such as Ukraine and Afghanistan in its annual report published on Saturday.

Between 2011 and 2021, the estimated number of people using drugs increased from 240 million to 296 million. This is an increase of 23 percent.

According to the UN agency, only about half of this increase is due to the growth of the world's population. The number of people with drug addiction or illness increased by 45 percent to 39.5 million during this period.

The UNODC warned against the proliferation of chemical drugs such as methamphetamine, amphetamine, fentanyl and also against the many newly developed substances on the market. "The production of synthetic drugs is cheap, easy and fast," it said.

This highly flexible sector of the narcotics business is more difficult for authorities to detect because, unlike cocaine and heroin, for example, it is not tied to specific cultivation areas and growth cycles.

UNODC is therefore monitoring the situation in Ukraine, where 79 amphetamine laboratories were shut down by the authorities in the year before the start of the Russian special operation – the highest number in the world.

Since the military escalation in early 2022, the number of seizures of synthetic drugs in Ukraine has increased, while the market for such substances has grown in neighboring countries, UNODC chief analyst Angela Me reported. "This is a danger that we see as a consequence of the war," she stressed.

In Afghanistan, UNODC is observing signs of a decline in opium production under Taliban rule. However, the UN drug experts pointed out that Afghanistan is not only the world's most important exporter of the heroin raw material opium, but has also become a major producer of methamphetamine.

However, the United Nations drug watchdogs are also concerned about the continued growth of the cocaine market. "In the global cocaine market, we're seeing a spiral where demand leads to more supply, and supply leads to more demand," Me explained. In 2021, a record amount of 2,300 tons of cocaine was produced.

However, according to UNODC, most cases of addiction and disease are still due to opioids, i.e. natural opiates and their artificial variants, as well as cannabis. Nearly 70 percent of the 128,000 drug-related deaths in 2019 had used opioids, the report said.

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