Global opium production in decline, says UN

Opium poppy cultivation was down 22 per cent worldwide in 2005, a United Nations report said today, part of a generally favourable, albeit inconclusive, trend in efforts by governments to contain illicit drug use.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2006 World Drug Report also found that cocaine use was reaching alarming levels in Western Europe. Consumption of marijuana, the most widely used illicit drug, continued to increase, the study said.

It attributed the decline in opium poppy cultivation to cutbacks in the three main source countries of illicit opium in the world: Afghanistan, Burma and Laos. Opium is the main ingredient for heroin.

“In Afghanistan, in 2005, opium poppy cultivation decreased for the first time since 2001,” the report said. Still, it said, that country accounted for 89 per cent of opium production worldwide.

The State Department’s annual report on illicit drugs, issued in March, acknowledged that opium production is hampering democracy-building efforts in Afghanistan.

“Afghanistan’s huge drug trade severely impacts efforts to rebuild the economy, develop a strong democratic government based on rule of law, and threatens regional stability,” the report said.

Despite the sharp decrease in the total area under cultivation in all opium producing countries, the UN report said production was down only 5 per cent due to more favourable weather conditions during the 2005 growing season in Afghanistan.

“The world’s supply of opium has shrunk, but in an unbalanced way,” the study said. “Within a few years, Asia’s notorious Golden Triangle, once the world’s narcotics epicentre, could become opium-free. But in Afghanistan, while the area under opium cultivation decreased in 2005, the country’s drug situation remains vulnerable to reversal. This could happen as early as 2006.”

Assessing the gamut of illicit drugs, from heroin to cocaine as well as marijuana, amphetamines and ecstasy, the report concluded: “Drug control is working and the world drug problem is being contained.”

Levels of drug cultivation and drug addiction are much lower than they were 100 years ago, it said.

“Even more importantly, in the past few years, worldwide efforts to reduce the threat posed by illicit drugs have effectively reversed a quarter-century-long rise in drug abuse that, if left unchecked, could have become a global pandemic,” the report added.

On coca, the plant used to make cocaine, the report reaffirmed a Bush administration finding in April that that total area of coca cultivation in Colombia has been increasing despite sustained, US-backed eradication efforts since 2000.

The administration says that the $4bn (€3.2bn) invested in its anti-cocaine strategy in Colombia is working, but some members of Congress and independent experts disagree.

Colombia accounts for 54 per cent of coca cultivation globally, followed by Peru (30 per cent) and Bolivia (16 per cent), according to the study.

Most cocaine continues to be used in the Americas, particularly North America, which accounts, with 6.5 million users, for almost half the global cocaine market, the report said.

While use in the Americas declined, the report said, it was rising in Europe, where the estimated 3.5 million users account for 26 per cent of the worldwide total, the largest concentration of which is in West and Central Europe.