Chapter 7: Drugs and drug control

                              THINGS IN COMMON

                            THINGS DIVERSE

In any one year, slightly over one in a thousand persons illicitly use heroin or other opiates, and two in a thousand illicitly use cocaine.

A small fraction of the world=s population uses drugs illicitly.

The number of types of illicit drugs has increased and their nature diversified in recent years.

While cannabis has long been the most prevalent global illicit drug, sedatives (primarily barbiturates, benzodiazapines and methaqualone) are estimated to be as prevalent if not more so.

Drug-related crimes have increased disproportionately in the last two decades when compared to other crime-related phenomena.  Types of crime committed by drug addicts are primarily acquisitive.

There are relatively few countries that keep centralized and internationally comparable records of illicit drug consumption.

The number of countries supporting the 1988 United Nations drug control convention has continued to increase over the last four years.

The balloon effect, in which crop reduction in one area has resulted in increase in other areas, has thus far prevented production at the global level from declining in absolute terms.

Proper evaluations of demand reduction and drug education programmes are still few and far between.

The price of heroin and cocaine has fallen dramatically in recent years.  This is primarily because, despite increased law enforcement interception efforts, the supply of drugs to consumers has greatly increased as a result of increased illicit production.

In many countries there is a de facto, if not an actual, decriminalization of small scale or Asimple@ possession of some soft drugs, particularly cannabis.

The economic incentives of the illicit drug trade serve to make organized trafficking extremely durable.

Drug trafficking and possession cases were more likely than the average crime to proceed to each subsequent stage of the global criminal justice system and to result in a sentence of imprisonment.

The available data suggest that two thirds of offenders in drug crime cases are given a non-incarceration sentence.