In its annual report, the United Nations Office on Drugs and crime fears that the production capacity is expanding in the country, in particular because “the police are no longer there to stop the activity”.
Article written by
Posted
Update
Reading time : 1 min.
Illicit drug manufacturing could take advantage of the war in Ukraine to thrive. To say so, the UN relies on the experience of conflicts in other areas. “Reports from the Middle East and Southeast Asia tend to indicate that conflict situations can act as a magnet for the manufacture of synthetic drugs, which can indeed be produced anywhere”underlines the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its report (link in english) annual released Sunday, June 26.
“This effect can be even greater when the conflict zone is near large consumer markets.”
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimein its annual report
Before the Russian invasion, Ukraine had a growing number of amphetamine laboratories, said expert Angela Me, interviewed by AFP. Nearly 80 of them had been dismantled in 2020, compared to 17 in 2019. This production capacity “could spread if the conflict persisted”. “The police are no longer there to stop the activity of the laboratories”, she explains. War can also “disrupt traffic routes”notes the report, citing a possible decline in Ukraine since early 2022.
Angela Me also calls for monitoring the situation in Afghanistan, which in 2021 produced 86% of the world’s opium. In April, the supreme leader of the Taliban ordered a ban on poppy cultivation. “We have to see if this will translate into a drastic reduction”underlines the expert, or if on the contrary the illicit fields will develop due to the deterioration of the socio-economic conditions in this country.
Any change will have “repercussions on almost all regions of the world”, warns the UN. Some 284 million people worldwide – one in 18 in the 15-64 age group – have touched drugs in 2020, up 26% from a decade earlier.