February 27, 2003	Thursday	Zul Hijjah 25, 1423

VIENNA, Feb 26: It is a myth that poor countries are enriched by drug production as more than 96 percent of the profits from illegal substances are earned in the countries where they are sold, the UN International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said Wednesday.

“Contrary to the widespread perception that income generated from the illicit drug industry automatically fosters economic development... countries in which illicit drugs have been produced have suffered a decline in economic growth,” the body said in its 2002 report released in Vienna.

“Estimates suggest that only one percent of the money that is ultimately spent worldwide by drug abusers on maintaining their drug habits is earned as farm income in developing countries,” the report said.

“The remaining 99 percent of the global illicit drug income is earned by drug trafficking groups,” operating mainly in the United States and Europe, the world’s two biggest markets for illicit drugs.

“Thus the overwhelming share of the profits of global illicit drug income are made in the countries where the end products are sold and abused,” the UN body concluded.

It said that in 2000 opium farmers in Afghanistan and coca producers in Colombia, whose harvests sustain much of the world’s heroine and cocaine abuse, earned an estimated 1.2 billion dollars (1.5 million euros).

This amount equals two percent of the total international aid to developing countries in 2000 and suggests that a slight increase in aid “could offset shortfalls for farmers who switch to licit crops.”

In the same year, heroine and cocaine sales in the United States and Europe totalled an estimated 60 billion dollars, it added.

On the whole, the INCB report said, only 3.8 percent of the money earned along the drug trafficking chain, ended up in the pockets of people living in poor, drug-producing countries.

It said that in Afghanistan, the world’s biggest opium producer, the drug trade fuelled instability because the profits were used to finance the country’s civil conflict.

“Massive increases in opium production in the early 1990s only helped to fuel civil wars and accelerated the destabilisation of the country.

“The illicit drug trade clearly failed to have any positive impact on the country’s overall social and economic development,” it said.

INCB president Philip Emafo remarks in the foreword to the report that “the same is true for other countries.”

“The Board has found no indications that the expansion of illicit crop cultivation leads to the improvement of any broader development indicator at the national level.”

The INCB said instead the drug trade inevitably led to an increase in violent crime, scared off foreign investors and ultimately prevented long-term economic growth.

On top of that, the drug economy undermined political stability as it “weakens the political system through corruption.”

Its profits were frequently used to fund election campaigns, insurrection, terrorism and organised crime, the report stated.

It cited Columbia and its cocaine wars as an example of how severely drugs can destabilise a society.

In the 1970s, before the country become a big player in the drug industry, 17 out of 100,000 people in the population died violently but after the Medelin cartel went to war against the state in 1988 the country’s murder rate shot up to 63 per 100,000 people.

In 1992, when the conflict was at its height, 80 Colombians out of every 100,000 were murdered.

The INCB said it found that Afghanistan has since the fall of the Taliban again become the world’s biggest producer of opium, harvesting 3,400 tons of the drug in 2002.

The agency called for tougher drug laws in that country and criticised those states that were softening legislation.

These included, The Netherlands and Canada, where lawmakers have decided to allow the medicinal use of cannabis, as well as Switzerland, which is planning to decriminalise the use of cannabis as well as buying, growing or being in possession of the drug for personal use.—AFP