World Drug Report 2009

From: Ruggiero, Mrs. Ana Lucia (WDC)

4:10 PM (6 hours ago)

World Drug Report 2009

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Vienna

Available online PDF [314P.] at: http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2009/WDR2009_eng_web.pdf

“……The year 2008 saw some encouraging reductions in the production of cocaine and heroin. In cooperation with the affected states, UNODC conducts annual crop surveys in the countries that produce the vast bulk of these drugs. These surveys show a reduction in opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan of 19% and a reduction in coca cultivation in Colombia of 18%. Trends in other production countries are mixed, but are not large enough to offset the declines in these two major producers.

Last year’s World Drug Report reviewed 100 years of drug control efforts, documenting the development of one of the first international cooperative ventures designed to deal with a global challenge. This pioneering work brought together nations with very different political and cultural perspectives to agree on a topic of considerable sensitivity: the issue of substance abuse and addiction.

Despite wars, economic crises, and other cataclysmic events of state, the global drug control movement has chugged steadily forward, culminating in a framework of agreements and joint interventions with few precedents or peers in international law.

Today, a number of substances are prohibited in the domestic legislation of almost every country. As discussed below, this unanimity has created a bulwark shielding millions from the effects of drug abuse and addiction. In the past, many of these substances were legally produced and, in some cases, aggressively marketed, to devastating effect. The collective nations of the world have agreed that this state of affairs was unacceptable, and have created an international control system that allows crops such as opium poppy to be produced for medical use, with very little diversion to the illicit market….”