Drug use worldwide hits staggering highs as cocaine, meth markets boom

By Around the Web

(Pixabay)
(Pixabay)

Erinn Broadus
Daily Caller News Foundation

There were 296 million people worldwide who used drugs in 2021, a 23% increase from 10 years prior, according to a new report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

In 2021, one in every 17 people ages 15 to 64 had used drugs within the past year, while those with substance abuse disorders skyrocketed to 39.5 million, a 45% increase from 10 years ago, according to the UNODC, which partly attributed the rise to population growth but also to an increase in drug use. Moreover, in 2021, 36 million individuals used amphetamines, 22 million used cocaine and 60 million used non-prescription opioids.

Cocaine use has been steadily increasing for the past two decades, according to the report. Additionally, meth production has expanded beyond traditional markets to include large clandestine labs in areas not previously known to traffic the drug, like Africa and Afghanistan.

Get the hottest, most important news stories on the Internet – delivered FREE to your inbox as soon as they break! Take just 30 seconds and sign up for WND’s Email News Alerts!

There were 22 million cocaine users in 2021, the most recent year for the data. The global cocaine market is largely in the Americas and in Western and Central Europe, but it has started to expand in Africa, Asia and Southern/Eastern Europe.

“The world is currently experiencing a prolonged surge in both supply and demand of cocaine, which is now being felt across the globe and is likely to spur the development of new markets beyond the traditional confines,” the report said.

Methamphetamine use, trafficking and manufacturing are currently centralized in North America and Southeast Asia, with 90% of seizures in one of the two areas between 2017 and 2021. Trafficking has stabilized at a “high level” in these areas, but has expanded significantly to new areas like the middle east and certain parts of Africa, the UNODC reported.

WND is now on Trump’s Truth Social! Follow us @WNDNews

Afghanistan produced 80% of the global supply of opium, the main ingredient in heroin, in 2022. Despite a recent drug ban introduced the same year, there is evidence of large-scale mass production of methamphetamine in the country, and experts do not yet know if these two drug production lines will run in tandem or independently from each other.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].


IMPORTANT NOTE: It’s hard to believe it’s really happening, but it is. Male athletes pretend to be females, dominate their sports, and are thereby rapidly destroying women’s competitive sports worldwide. Convicted male criminals suddenly claim to be transgender so they can be confined in a women’s prison and sexually abuse the female inmates there. Men claiming to be female likewise invade women’s locker rooms, bathrooms, schools, dormitories, sororities, shelters, spas and social organizations – and in the process steal women’s scholarships, advancement, honors and myriad other opportunities.

Meanwhile, transgender groomers and recruiters in schools and on social media platforms like TikTok are continually feeding and expanding the current “mass hysteria” craze that has already led countless teen girls to take testosterone and undergo double mastectomies in a pathetic effort to become boys. No wonder the CDC reports 3 in 5 teen girls say they feel “persistently sad or hopeless” and almost 1 in 3 say they have seriously considered committing suicide.

All of this on top of the radical left’s renewed obsession with killing women’s unborn babies via abortion.

The “woke” left’s maniacal attack on women and girls, virtually unreported by the rest of the media, is the entire focus of the sensational June issue of WND’s critically acclaimed WHISTLEBLOWER magazine, titled “THE LEFT’S TOTAL WAR ON WOMEN.” WHISTLEBLOWER is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.


SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!

Leave a Comment