A new era of global instability is empowering organised crime groups and ‘pushing drug use to historically high levels’ says the 2025 World drug report from UNODC. These organisations ‘continue to adapt, exploit global crises and target vulnerable populations’, it says.
Around 316m people used a drug – excluding tobacco and alcohol – in 2023. This represents 6 per cent of the population aged between 15 and 64, up from 5.2 per cent just over a decade ago. Although cannabis remains the most widely used substance, at 244m users, cocaine is now the world’s fastest growing illegal drug market, with production ‘skyrocketing’ to more than 3,700 tons in 2023 – a 34 per cent increase on the previous year. There are now 25m cocaine users worldwide, says UNODC, up from 17m in 2013.
Cocaine traffickers are also breaking into new markets across Asia and Africa, the document adds, while the ‘vicious violence and competition characterizing the illicit cocaine arena, once confined to Latin America, is now spreading to Western Europe as organized crime groups from the Western Balkans increase their influence over the market’.
The synthetic drug market is also continuing to expand, aided by the fact that the drugs can be produced closer to their intended markets – with lower operational costs and less risk of detection. ‘By 2024 more new nitazenes than new fentanyl analogues were being reported by member states to UNODC, and accounted for almost 50 per cent of all reported opioid NPS,’ the report says.
There are now more than 60m opioid users worldwide, the report continues, while ‘just one in 12 people with drug use disorders were estimated to have received any form of drug treatment in 2023’. Of the 14m people who inject drugs, 6.9m are living with hepatitis C, 1.7m are living with HIV and 1.5m are living with both. Opium production remains ‘comparatively low’ following the Taliban’s 2022 ban, the document says. However, economic pressures faced by farmers ‘threaten this trajectory, while the emergence of synthetic opioids as an alternative for opiate users is also a danger.’
The report’s publication coincides with a joint statement from 70 organisations – including Amnesty International, Release, Harm Reduction International (HRI) and the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) – calling on the UNODC and Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) to unequivocally condemn the use of the death penalty for drug-related offences and ‘take concrete steps to ensure that international human rights safeguards restricting the imposition of this cruel punishment are fully implemented, with a view to its full abolition’.
Failure to take a stand risks being interpreted as ‘tolerance or even complicity at a critical moment when drug-related executions are in an unprecedented rise’, it says. Last year saw more drug executions than any since 2015, according to the latest analysis by HRI, with more than 615 people executed and almost 380 death sentences passed. There are currently around 2,300 people on death row for drug offences worldwide, the HRI report stated.
Meanwhile, more than 1,800 tonnes of illicit drugs were seized at – or in transit to – EU ports between 2019 and 2024, according to the first detailed overview of the situation. More than 80 per cent were seized from container ships, says Seaports: monitoring the EU’s floodgates for illicit drugs, a joint analysis by EUDA, the World Customs Organization (WCO) and the European Ports Alliance. There is a ‘vital need’ for better data sharing and closer cooperation between seaports, the document states.
The scale and regularity of the shipments suggest a ‘significant degree of penetration by organised criminal networks in EU ports, including the likely corruption of some port staff’, the report states, adding that ‘violence related to drug trafficking has frequently been seen in these port environments’.
More than 80 per cent of seizures were of cocaine, with Antwerp and Rotterdam accounting for 443 tonnes and 181 tonnes respectively. However, a ‘diverse range of other ports – of varying sizes and shipping capacities – are also impacted’, the report points out, with the Spanish ports of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Huelva accounting for the largest quantities of cannabis resin seized.
World drug report available here
World drug day statement available here
Seaports: monitoring the EU’s floodgates for illicit drugs available here