The InterDependent

The international effort to curb the global drug problem has grown more challenging as relatively new drug types are increasingly flowing from new markets around the world, according to a recent United Nations report.

The UN released its World Drug Report 2010 in June, outlining that amphetamine-type stimulants like Ecstasy are now the drugs of choice worldwide, frustrating enforcement efforts because of the drugs’ easy production and availability.

Joe Penney

Some coastal islands of Guinea-Bissau and its port are said to be part of a drug transport route from South America to Europe. Here, an island with Colonial-era buildings during the Portuguese rule.

The report, issued by the Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna, also notes that overall illicit drug use has stabilized in industrial nations in the last five years but is rising drastically in developing states, sometimes providing a cash flow to terrorist networks to finance violent acts.

“It’s a creature that mutates all the time,” said Sandeep Chawla, director of policy analysis and public affairs at the Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna, referring to the nature of curtailing drug use.

These developments come as counternarcotics efforts in the US, Europe and Australia – by far the largest consumer markets of illicit drug use – have made progress in seizures of more traditional drugs: botanical-based products like cocaine, marijuana and heroin.

The jump in amphetamine use has forced enforcement agencies to open a new front.

“If you have success in one area but not in another, the net gain is limited,” Chawla said in a phone interview with UNA-USA. “Like a balloon, you squeeze one side and the other side pops up. Because of that, by and large it’s difficult to argue there are major successes.”

The UN agency also reports that booms in drug use and production are happening in East and West Africa, South America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

In particular, a Latin American-African shipping route has emerged as a major trafficking highway from Venezuela to Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and the Ivory Coast in recent years, a response to successful crackdowns in Colombia and Mexico.

The UN agency compiles the World Drug Report annually, providing a detailed look at global drug consumption, production and trafficking to identify trends in the global drug marketplace. The aim of the report is to provide member countries of the UN with information on the scope of the drug problem and how to better allocate resources to disrupt it.

Chawla said the main issue many enforcement agencies around the world are facing is an inability to keep up to date on changes in criminal drug production and market distribution.

This lack of knowledge has contributed to the spread of new drug problems, he said.

For instance, enforcement of botanical drugs -- which require a long supply chain of harvesting, production and transportation -- have in the past given police plenty of room to strike. But less understood amphetamines, which are made from chemicals that can be obtained near the areas where they are consumed and where there is no large geographical chain, have tested enforcement norms.

David A. Shirk, the director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego agrees that the enforcement problem is about trying to get a grip on a slippery slope.

“Trafficking shifts to new areas where there is less pressure, resulting in a ‘cockroach effect,’ where putting more pressure or light on the traffickers causes them to scatter to other areas,” Shirk said in an e-mail.

Counternarcotics agencies in the US also agree with the UN report’s findings about synthetic drugs.

“Abuse and trafficking in highly addictive amphetamine-type stimulants remain among the more serious challenges in the drug-control arena,” said Susan Pittman, a spokeswoman for the US State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, in an e-mail to UNA-USA.

Second only to Sweden, the US is the biggest contributor to the Office of Drugs and Crime budget, pursuing a “zero tolerance” drug policy. Many of the same goals that the US employs to fight drugs in its own borders – like drug prohibition and counternarcotics policing – are echoed by the UN as productive methods.

The State Department bureau is responsible for helping to combat the international narcotics trade by providing more than 60 countries financing to build their national institutions and law enforcement programs to counter local drug trades.

Mexico, for example, will receive more than $415 million in 2010 in counternarcotics financing from the US government, the highest amount paid to any nation in Latin America.

“To estimate an activity that is criminal is difficult,” Pittman said. “We are working together [with the UN] to both refine and improve our efforts.”

Pittman said that the State Department effort was deeply tied to the UN effort to tackle the drug problem. Besides money, the US provides the UN agency with satellite images, scientific studies on crop yields and agricultural surveys, Pittman said.

“The potential abuse rate remains a concern and, as the UN indicates, abuse and our concerns may be rising,” Pittman said.

New Remedies to Old Ills

Indeed, America’s drug consumption has stabilized but it hasn’t gone away, the UN report says.

“So, is our appetite growing or shrinking? Only as much as the human condition is growing or shrinking,” said Shirk of the Trans-Border Institute.

Shirk said that America’s drug problem is fed by a cultural yearning for escape-like outlets.

“As long as people are depressed, we will likely have substance abuse,” Shirk said. “As long as teenagers are looking for a way to find belonging with their peers, there will be experimentation with mood altering substances.
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A more rounded approach incorporating enforcement with curbing consumption would be more successful, Chawla said.

For example, he said too often efforts against drugs focus more heavily on enforcement – viewed as an instant cure – and not the grittier problem of dealing with addicts and users and weaning them off substances.

“You need to squeeze everywhere on the balloon so it pops,” he added. ”If we were to balance the two approaches and treat users as they have a medical problem, we could start to see more lasting results.”