IDPC Analysis of the UNODC World Drug Report 2016

The World Drug Report for 2016, the flagship publication of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), is framed by the recent United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs, and draws on key themes developing from the Special Session. It shows the influence of the Outcome Document, and of the Sustainable Development Agenda (SDA).

The Report devotes considerable energy to examining the extent of drug use and its consequences for health. While emphasising the play of uncertainty within its field of knowledge, it nevertheless makes some rather grand claims, such as that one in 20 adults – or a quarter of a billion individuals – used at least one drug in 2014, the last year for which data are available. The narrative of stability is invoked alongside this claim by reminding the reader that this group has remained the same as a proportion of the global proportion, which has expanded in parallel.