In 2019, three valuable reports were released by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNDOC) and the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), which provide a good overview of the drug landscape in Europe, the Americas and worldwide.
Utilising data collected from European Union (EU) member states, Turkey and Norway, EMCDDA’s “European Drug Report” focuses on the landscape surrounding drugs across the continent. The report highlights areas of encouraging developments like the 40% drop in new HIV cases in the injecting drug use population. It also highlights areas where progress is yet to be made or where new concerns have emerged such as the 50 new synthetic opioids reported to the EU early warning system, some of which have been linked to severe poisonings and deaths.
CICAD issued their third report on drug use in the Americas this year. The report acknowledges some of the policy challenges in light of the diversity of the continent, observing that key factors driving drug use vary from country to country, a fact to be borne in mind when crafting policies. The rise in the availability of new psychoactive substances also features in this report with North America identified as the region harbouring the largest and most diversified markets in the continent.
UNDOC’s “World Drug Report” on the other hand, provides an overview of drug trends across the globe, reporting a 30% rise over the last decade in the number of people using drugs worldwide. The report adds that approximately 43% of the 11.3 million people around the world estimated to inject drugs reside in China, the Russian Federation and the United States. Continuing the thread of concern surrounding the rise in synthetic opioids, UNDOC’s analysis reports a market boom in the United States where a large majority of the 47,000 opioid related deaths in 2017 were linked to synthetic opioids.