Diplomats and top officials from governments around the world gathered last week at United Nations headquarters in New York to discuss what to do about the global drug problem. Over the course of four days and multiple discussions, the assembled dignitaries vowed to take a more comprehensive approach to the issue than in years past — but they also decided to keep waging the war on drugs.
The “outcome document” adopted during the UN General Assembly’s special session (UNGASS) calls for countries to “prevent and counter” drug-related crime by disrupting the “illicit cultivation, production, manufacturing, and trafficking” of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and other substances banned by international law. The document also reaffirmed the UN’s “unwavering commitment” to “supply reduction and related measures.”
Yet according to the UN’s own data, the supply-oriented approach to fighting drug trafficking has been a failure of epic proportions. Last May, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued its 2015 World Drug Report, which shows that — despite billions of dollars spent trying to eradicate illicit crops, seize drug loads, and arrest traffickers — more people than ever before are getting high.
The UNODC conservatively estimated that in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available, 246 million people worldwide, or 1 out of 20 individuals between the ages of 15 and 64, used an illicit drug, an increase of 3 million people over the previous year. More alarmingly, 27 million people were characterized as “problem drug users.” Only one out of every six of these problem users had access to any sort of addiction treatment.
Meanwhile, at a UN roundtable on drug-related crime and money laundering last week, the agenda noted that while drug treaties remain unchanged, organized crime has kept pace with the expansion of the global economy: “Advances in technology, transport, and travel have added to the fluid efficiency and speed of the global economy. They also offer similar efficiencies to the business of trafficking networks.”
In other words, globalization has led to an explosion of drug trafficking. More than 420 million shipping containers traverse the seas every year, transporting 90 percent of the world’s cargo. Most carry legitimate goods, but authorities cannot inspect them all, and some are used to smuggle drugs — or just as importantly, the chemicals used to make meth and cheaply process coca leaves and opium poppies into cocaine and heroin. Airplanes, submarines, speedboats, trucks, tunnels — taken as a whole, the systems used to move illegal drugs around the world comprise a logistics network likely bigger than Amazon, FedEx, and UPS combined.
Precisely how all of that illicit cargo moves around the globe is constantly shifting. New routes evolve as authorities crack down, laws evolve, wars erupt, and the climate changes. During UNGASS, VICE News spoke with UNODC officials from Mexico and Southeast Asia, as well as with independent experts on organized crime in Latin America, to learn about the latest trends determining how drugs are smuggled around the globe.
We also culled information from the aforementioned UNODC report, the US State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy report, the White House’s reporton National Drug Control Strategy, and a variety of other sources.
This is what we learned about today’s golden age of drug trafficking.
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