World drug report: 316 million take drugs – coke spreads out

According to a UN report, the number of drug users has risen to 316 million people worldwide. In its current world drug report, the UN office for drug and crime fighting (UNODC) in Vienna also pointed out that criminal groups exploited and strengthened the unstable situation in many regions.

The status of drug users and most other figures in the report relate to 2023 – these are the latest figures for a global view of the situation. For 2022, the experts started from 292 million drug users worldwide. It should be difficult anyway to determine an exact number for all regions.

In 2023, Cannabis was clearly the most widespread drug with 244 million consumers, followed by opiates (61 million), amphetamines (30.7 million), cocaine (25 million) and ecstasy (21 million).

The number of people who take drugs – apart from alcohol or tobacco – increased by 28 percent within a decade. Consumption is growing faster than the global population, explained Unodc boss Ghada Waly on the international day against drug abuse. In the report, she wrote in the report at the moment both growing demand and a growing supply. “This fueled global instability and further heats up this instability – a vicious circle.”

The cocaine market is growing fastest among all drugs, the annual report said. The illegal cocaine production increased by more than a third to the record amount of 3708 tons in 2023. The number of consumers rose from 17 million to 25 million between 2013 and 2023.

According to the UN specialists, the cocaine boom not only leads to more drug deaths, but also to more violence between rival criminal organizations that are involved in the drug smuggling. This was also observed in Western and Central Europe, it said. More cocaine has been confiscated in these two regions for several years than in North America.

The destabilizing effect of the white stimulant is even more pronounced elsewhere. The UN Office for Drug and Crime Control reported, for example, of a dramatically increased murder rate in Ecuador and increasing gang violence in the Caribbean.

Former and acute war zones also observe the UN drug experts with concern. In Syria, export and import of the synthetic drug Captagon stubbornly last. In Ukraine, the production of synthetic drugs and the trade rose during the war.

The UN office assumes that 64 million people were addicted to drugs in 2023-an increase of 13 percent within ten years. In Germany there were 2227 drug deaths nationwide in 2023 – twice as many as ten years earlier. The number for 2024 is to be presented in early July.

The new federal drug commissioner Hendrik Streeck warned against dismissing dependence as a border issue. The debate about drugs and addiction is a social society, the CDU politician said in Berlin. Streeck advised “not to counter the topic from the perspective of the custom or the right, but to health”. The youth and weakest should be particularly in view.

With regard to young consumers, however, the UNODC pointed out a positive trend in Europe: Even though European teenagers aged 15 and 16 consumed an above-average amount of cannabis, the frequency of consumption among young people has decreased significantly in recent years, the office quoted from a current European study.