CB BureauIndia has called for renewed global efforts to combat the ‘severe challenge’ of drug trafficking, warning it was being used to finance terrorism and transnational organised crime. ‘There is deep-rooted nexus between drug mafias, arms dealers and money launderers,’ visiting Member of Parliament Dharmendra Yadav said during a General Assembly session on ‘Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice’ and ‘International Drug Control’ in New York.
The annual quantum of the global drug trafficking market of over $320 billion illustrates the severity and depth of the problem. While the global illicit drug use is reportedly stable, the reported increase in the non-medical use of prescription drugs and abuse of new psychoactive substances not under international control is ‘alarming’.
According to the World Drug Report 2012, while drug consumption has decreased in the developed world, it has increased in the developing world. Releasing the report in June this year, Yury Fedotov, Executive Director of United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), had told the United Nations General Assembly that ‘heroin, cocaine and other drugs continue to kill around 200,000 people a year, shattering families and bringing misery to thousands of other people, insecurity and the spread of HIV.’
Around 230 million people, or 5 per cent of the world’s adult population (aged 15 to 64), are estimated to have used an illicit drug at least once in 2010, according to the World Drug Report 2012. Problem drug users, mainly heroin- and cocaine-dependent persons, number about 27 million, roughly 0.6 per cent of the world adult population, or 1 in every 200 people, the report notes.
Trafficking in persons and illicit drugs were two of the most heinous forms of transnational organized crime and they would continue to ravage the world’s economies without holistic and coordinated action by source, transit and destination countries alike, delegates in the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Committee of United Nations) voiced as a collective as they wrapped up their two-day discussion on crime prevention and international drug control, on October 11.
Human trafficking, in particular, was among the fastest-growing criminal activities, speakers said, with thousands of women, men and children trafficked for sexual or labour exploitation each year. Gang networks operated smoothly across borders, easily adapting to changing ground conditions and circumventing national law enforcement intended to blunt their efforts.
As for drug use, it appears to be spilling over into countries lying on trafficking routes, such as in West and Central Africa, which are witnessing rising numbers of cocaine users, and Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which are grappling with the highest rates of opium and heroin use. In this context, Fedotov had stressed that drug-producing and drug-consuming countries alike have a stake in fighting the scourge, adding that governments should not forget that illicit drugs affect health and security globally.
As developing countries emulate the lifestyles of industrialized nations, drug consumption will probably increase, placing a heavier burden on countries ill equipped to deal with burgeoning drug demand. International support should therefore aim at strengthening the capacity of vulnerable nations to confront that challenge, Fedotov said.