By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
Before the pandemic, the United States was the first developed country to see life expectancy drop by several months due to drug deaths. Now that the pandemic has taken two years off of average American’s life expectancy, drug use continues to remain a factor.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released its 2021 World Drug Report on June 24. Worldwide, there has been an increase in drug risks while more young folks are underestimating the dangers involved.
The report summary states “around 275 million people used drugs worldwide in the last year, while over 36 million people suffered from drug use disorders.’
In addition, the Report indicates that “...in the last 24 years cannabis potency had increased by as much as four times in parts of the world, even as the percentage of adolescents who perceived the drug as harmful fell by as much as 40 per cent, despite evidence that cannabis use is associated with a variety of health and other harms, especially among regular long-term users.”
“Lower perception of drug use risks has been linked to higher rates of drug use,” states UNODC Executive Director Ghada Waly. The Report’s findings “...highlight the need to close the gap between perception and reality to educate young people and safeguard public health.”
The Report notes that “the percentage of THC–the main psychoactive component in cannabis–has risen from around six per cent to more than 11 per cent in Europe between 2002-2019, and around four per cent to 16 per cent in the United States between 1995-2019, while the percentage of adolescents that perceived cannabis as harmful declined by 40 per cent in the United States and by 25 per cent in Europe.”
In addition, “most countries have reported a rise in the use of cannabis during the pandemic. In surveys of health professionals across 77 countries, 42 per cent asserted that cannabis use had increased. A rise in the non-medical use of pharmaceutical drugs has also been observed in the same period.”
The Report globally estimates “about 5.5 per cent of the population aged between 15 and 64 years have used drugs at least once in the past year, while 36.3 million people, or 13 per cent of the total number of persons who use drugs, suffer from drug use disorders.”
Injecting drugs also serves to transfer other diseases. Worldwide, “over 11 million people are estimated to inject drugs, half of whom are living with Hepatitis C. Opioids continue to account for the largest burden of disease attributed to drug use.”
The two drugs used in treatment, methadone and buprenorphine, have increased in use six-fold since 1999, to 3,317 million doses in 2019.
The Dark Web is becoming a major marketing system for drugs, with a “fourfold increase between 2011 to mid-2017 and mid-2017 to 2020.” This is projected to increase dramatically everywhere in the world.
The drug market has grown due to: “increasingly larger shipments of illicit drugs, a rise in the frequency of overland and water-way routes used for trafficking, greater use of private planes for the purpose of drug trafficking, and an upsurge in the use of contactless methods to deliver drugs to end-consumers.”
The U.S. is not alone: “...cocaine supply chains to Europe are diversifying, pushing prices down and quality up and thereby threatening Europe with a further expansion of the cocaine market. This is likely to widen the potential harm caused by the drug in the region.”
The Report notes that the impact of COVID-19 in causing economic hardship “is likely to make illicit drug cultivation more appealing to fragile rural communities.” Along with the increase in income inequality and poverty, this could see more people pushed into drug use.
The World Drug Report is available at wdr.unodc.org/ and www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/wdr2021.html .
. . .
John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.