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POLITICS: U.N. Drug Report Claims Crackdown Is Paying Off

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 27 2006 (IPS) - Global opium production, particularly in Southeast Asia, fell during 2005, while cocaine production was broadly unchanged compared to 2004, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which released its “2006 World Drug Report” here Monday.

The two-volume report, which singled out efforts by Laos to stamp out opium production for special praise, warned that cocaine consumption in Western Europe has reached “alarming levels”. It also featured a special section suggesting that the world’s most popular illicit drug, cannibis, may be more dangerous than previously believed.

What progress in drug control has been made could be easily reversed, particularly if farmers in major opium- or coca-growing areas are not provided development aid, according to the report, which, however, was generally upbeat about the global drug situation.

“Drug control is working, and the world drug problem is being contained,” UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa told reporters here.

“This is true whether we look over the long term or even just over the past few years,” he added, noting that, “Humanity has entered the 21st century with much lower levels of drug cultivation and drug addiction than 100 years earlier. Even more importantly, in the past few years, worldwide efforts to reduce the threat posed by illicit drugs have halted a quarter-century-long rise in drug abuse that, if left unchecked, could have become a global pandemic.”

Several critics, however, took issue both with Costa’s claims of success for drug-control efforts and even with some of the factual assertions cited in the report, particularly those that compared drug production and use today with a century ago when the first international drug-control initiatives were undertaken.

“His claim that the world drug problem is not as bad as 100 years ago is preposterous,” noted Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). “This report provides ample evidence why such evaluations need to be undertaken by independent, outside auditors, rather than a highly politicised entity like UNODC.”

“The report suffers from the tension between UNODC policy makers who want a strict control regime maintained – and who are under huge U.S. funding pressure – and the experts willing to open an honest debate about the effectiveness of outdated aspects of the currency policy framework,” added Tom Blickman of the Drugs and Democracy Programme of the Transnational Institute (TNI) in Amsterdam.

The report estimated the total number of drug users in the world today at some 200 million people, or about five percent of the global population, ages 15-64.

Of that total, some 162 million are believed to use cannabis; some 35 million use amphetamine-type stimulants, including ecstasy; 16 million, opiates; and 13 million, cocaine.

According to the report, a five-percent reduction in global opium production – and a 22-percent reduction in the estimated area under illicit poppy cultivation – marked the greatest advance in drug control during 2005.

The greatest progress was achieved in the so-called “Golden Triangle” in Southeast Asia where the total area under cultivation fell from almost 160,000 hectares in 1998 to just 34,600 hectares in 2005.

While Burma, which just a few years ago was the world’s largest opium producer, continued to reduce the area under cultivation to about one quarter of 1998 levels, Laos made even greater strides, reducing cultivation area by 72 percent in just one year, and placing the country “on the verge of becoming opium poppy free”.

In Afghanistan, which in 2005 produced nearly 90 percent of the world’s opium, total production and the area under cultivation both fell for the first time since the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

The report noted, however, that planting of opium poppy has increased during 2006, particularly in the Pashtun-dominated southern provinces. “While the area under cultivation decreased in 2005, the country’s drug situation remains vulnerable to reversal,” the reported noted. “This could happen as early as 2006.”

In the Americas, opium production is also believed to have fallen during 2005, according to the report. For Colombia, it cited government estimates of a 50 percent reduction in the area cultivated with opium poppy – to 2,000 hectares; for Mexico, it cited U.S. estimates of a 32-percent decline over two years – to about 3,300 hectares.

Global coca cultivation and cocaine production remained stable during 2005, according to the report. An eight-percent increase in the area under coca cultivation in Colombia, where some 54 percent of the world’s coca is grown, was balanced by corresponding declines in Bolivia and Peru, it said.

The report also noted a six-fold increase in cocaine seizures in West and Central Africa, which it said has become an increasingly important transit point for cocaine shipments bound for Europe where cocaine use is on the rise, and some 3.5 million people have now become users. While that remains significantly fewer than the estimated 6.5 million users in North America, it runs counter to the broader trend of declining use on the other side of the Atlantic.

After years of massive increases in the 1990s, according to the report, the market for amphetamine-type stimulants appears to be stabilising, according to the report.

Cannibis, which is produced in some 176 countries, according to the report, is growing in popularity virtually everywhere, although North America is the largest-consuming region in economic terms.

The report called for policy-makers who have favoured more tolerant policies toward cannabis to “rethink their positions” in light of the emergence of the development of more-potent “new cannabis” and “recent research indicating that the health risks associated with cannabis consumption may have been under-estimated in the past”.

It also claimed that there had been an increase of “acute health episodes” believed to have been caused by cannabis consumption” in U.S. emergency rooms and a growth in rehabilitation demand from cannabis users in the U.S. and Europe.

But DPA’s Nadelmann called the report’s remarks about cannabis “hysterical” and lacking in scientific rigour.

Both he and TNI also assailed the report for its failure to adequately address measures aimed at reducing the negative impact of drug use. “This means that the real existing success stories from the past decade, such as reduced numbers of overdose deaths and lower rates of HIV transmission due to harm-reduction efforts, are left out (of the report) completely,” noted TNI researcher Martin Jelsma.