Pubdate: Thu, 24 Jun 2010
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2010 Reuters
Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Sylvia Westall, Reuters
Referenced: World Drug Report 2010 
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2010.html

COCAINE USE IN EUROPE IS ON THE RISE

West Africa Is Drug's New Transit Route: UN

The world's $88-billion cocaine market is shifting toward Europe and 
is severely destabilizing transit countries in West Africa, even as 
total production falls, a United Nations report said on Wednesday.

The shift in demand has altered trafficking routes, with more cocaine 
flowing from Andean countries to Europe via Africa rather than to the 
United States, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said.

"This is causing regional instability," the UNODC said in its 
wide-ranging annual World Drug Report.

"People snorting coke in Europe are killing the pristine forests of 
the Andean countries and corrupting governments in West Africa," 
UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said.

The number of cocaine users in Europe has doubled in the last decade 
and the market is now worth $34 billion, almost as much as that in 
North America, the world's biggest consumer of the drug.

Europe's around four million cocaine users consumed about one quarter 
of global production in 2008.

World cocaine production has fallen 12 to 18 per cent in the past 
three years and the North American market is shrinking, thanks in 
part to police crackdowns in producer Colombia and transit corridor Mexico.

The world's other main "problem drug," heroin, is also seeing a 
decline in production and will continue to do so, the report said, 
citing expected declines in crop yields.

Iran and Turkey had done well to tackle the heroin flow out of 
Afghanistan, which produces most of the world's supply, but Russia, 
Central Asian and Balkan countries had performed poorly, the agency said.

While the two main substances are seeing declines, overall abuse has 
risen in developing countries, many of which lack the means to treat 
their addicts properly, the UNODC said.

More West Africans are taking cocaine as the drug passes through 
their countries on the way to the larger European market and more 
people in East Africa are taking heroin.

"We will not solve the world drugs problem by shifting consumption 
from the developed to the developing world," Costa said.
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