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Chapter 1.Litho exploited by drug trafficking organizations. What is more, the rise in drug abuse in such countries has proven extremely difficult to contain because of INTRODUCTION fragmented and unprepared medical and health authorities. In situations of armed conflict, illicit Governments and international organizations drug revenues – or the drugs themselves – are regularly collect and analyze data on illicit drug regularly exchanged for arms. production, trafficking and consumption. In most cases, however, trends can be identified only indi- In a world that becomes increasingly complex, the rectly due to the inherently clandestine nature of scope for profit-making in the illicit drug trade is the activities. With this constraint acknowledged at rapidly expanding. The relationship between illicit the outset, this chapter seeks to describe global drugs and economic development, for example, is trends on the basis of available information. The far more important than generally recognized: overview may help to place in context trends and while it is widely accepted that illicit cultivation issues described in subsequent parts of this report. occurs in many developing countries, the effects of the illegal trade on local communities is all too The illicit drug phenomenon cannot be viewed often assumed to be cost-free. In fact, the spillover outside the context of contemporary economic, of production into abuse has a negative impact on social and political developments. Changes in the the local workforce. Illicit sector income is unevenly world political economy and advances in distributed; at the lower level of the production technology over the past three decades have had a chain it barely exceeds income in the licit sector. significant impact on the scope and nature of the The bulk of the profits is generated further illicit drug problem. It is now recognized that rapid downstream, ending up in the hands of the growth in the trade of goods and services has traffickers who control exports to, and distribution resulted in a more interdependent world. Yet despite in, the country of consumption. the positive implications which the increase in world trade has for prosperity and efficiency, What follows in the remainder of this chapter is sustained growth in international trade can comp- an overview of the broad global trends in illicit licate efforts to control the illicit drug problem. drug production, trafficking and consumption. While these trends will be examined in greater In ways not dissimilar to their counterparts in legal detail in later parts of this report, the figures and enterprise, criminal organizations involved in illicit statistics go far in describing the tremendous drugs respond to opportunities created by a challenge facing the international community as globalizing market economy. The past decade has it seeks to come to terms with the illicit drug seen great strides in banking deregulation and the problem. privatization of state owned businesses; however, much of this distancing of official intervention from the day to day workings of the economy has taken 1.1. ILLICIT DRUG place in countries where the regulatory environ- PRODUCTION ment is still in an embryonic state. Although these reforms are intended to encourage investment and The countries with the largest cultivation areas economic development and to improve efficiency for relative to arable land are depicted in Fig. 1. In local consumers and investors, the inadequacy of addition to the cultivation of cannabis, the plants regulations leaves these economic systems vulner- used in the illicit production of cocaine and heroin able to criminal exploitation. are coca leaf and opium poppy. Political events, in particular domestic instability Fig. 2 shows global trends in the production of and conflict, are also an important factor. The opium poppy and coca leaf. It can be seen that the collapse of state structures in many countries has production of coca leaf has more than doubled and left an institutional vacuum which has been that of opium poppy has more than tripled since 17 Fig. 1: Illicit cultivation in the early 1990s. Guatemala Botswana Swaziland Tajikistan Illicit cultivation as share of arable land, % Trinidad, Tobago Mexico Jamaica Sudan Kazakhstan Morocco Pakistan Lesotho South Africa Myanmar Colombia Bolivia Kyrgystan Lao People’s Dem. Rep. Afganistan Peru 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 33.5 Includes opium, coca and cannabis cultivation. Source: UNDCP database. 1985.1 Global hectarage devoted to illicit opium The remainder is converted into heroin in illicit poppy cultivation expanded to about 280,000 laboratories. More than 300 tonnes of heroin are hectares by 1996. Almost 90% of the world´s illic- thought to have been produced annually in the itly produced opiates originate in the two main 1990´s, mostly for export. production areas – the Golden Crescent (Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan) and the Golden Most of the world´s coca is grown in the Andean Triangle (Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand). Afghanistan countries – Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia, which and Myanmar are the two main countries of illicit together account for more than 98% of world cocaine opium poppy cultivation; to a much lesser extent supplies. Half the global cultivation of approximately illicit cultivation takes place in Colombia, Lao PDR, 220,000 (1996) hectares takes place in Peru, while Viet Nam, Pakistan, Mexico, India, Thailand and Bolivia and Colombia each account for nearly one China and the Middle East. Emerging and poten- quarter of the total. Estimates of global illicit produc- tially important producers include the countries of tion of coca leaves suggest a doubling of production Central Asia. over the 1985 to 1994 period, although production seems to be down from the 1991/1992 peak level.2 The illicit production of opium gum was thought to About 1,000 tonnes of cocaine could have been have reached 5,000 tonnes in 1996. About a third manufactured from the 300,000 tonnes of coca leaf of the total is believed to be consumed as opium. produced in 1996. 18 Fig. 2: Trends in global production synthetic drugs is warranted as well. Since the of illicit drugs (Index: 1985 = 100). mid-1980s the world has faced a wave of synthetic stimulant abuse, with approximately nine times the Coca leaf Opium quantity seized in 1993 than in 1978, equivalent to Cannabis an average annual increase of 16%. The principal synthetic drugs manufactured clandestinely are the 350 amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) which include the widely abused amphetamine and metham- 300 phetamine, as well as the more recently popularized methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), known 250 as ecstasy, and methcathinone. Lysergic acid diethyl- amide (LSD) is a synthetic drug also produced 200 clandestinely, whereas sedatives – another type of synthetic drug which includes barbiturates and Index benzodiazepines – are typically diverted from licit 150 channels. 100 Ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are precursors to methamphetamine and methcathinone, two 50 powerful central nervous system stimulants. Ephedra is the plant from which ephedrine 0 and pseudoephedrine – substances that have a 1985 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 stimulating effect – are extracted. Ephedrine has a variety of licit pharmaceutical uses and thus most of the substance available in illicit markets is Source: Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, International Narcotics Control Report diverted from licit sources. For instance, there are 1996 (Washington, D.C., Department of State, 1996), p. 25. indications that licitly produced ephedrine in just a Base-year figures (1985) are averages of the range provided in Bureau of International Narcotics Matters, International few countries has been diverted into illicit Narcotics Control Report 1986 (Washington, D.C., Department stimulant production domestically and abroad. In of State, 1986). addition, some illicit production of ephedrine from plants in the wild has been detected in the Central Asian countries of Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan. In contrast to the localized outbreaks of abuse in Fig. 3 – 5 show regional trends in cultivation and distinct countries in the past, ATS are now trafficking between 1985 and 1995. The maps consumed in practically every region of the world. detail the patterns of cultivation in South West The level of ATS abuse compared to cocaine and Asia, South East Asia, and Latin America. It is clear heroin abuse in the 1990s is shown in Fig. 6. that during the past decade, illicit drug production and trafficking have spread to new geographical areas. The trend is likely to continue, with illicit 1.3. DETECTION OF ILLICIT drug production expanding in places where law LABORATORIES enforcement poses the least threat. The number of laboratories where drugs are manu- factured illegally can serve as an indicator of the 1.2. SYNTHETIC DRUGS amount of illicit drugs produced. However, illicit laboratories are detected only in a small number of While the global threat posed by heroin and cocaine countries, with the United States, Poland, and can be grasped from the above statistics, a brief but Colombia ranking high on this list. In the USA, specific reference to the particular challenge of 84% of detected laboratories manufactured 19.
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