BRUSSELS: A growing number of people are getting addicted to tranquillisers and other prescription drugs, and this abuse is set to exceed illicit drug abuse, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) warns in a report published on Thursday.

“Thanks to prevention campaigns youngsters are thinking more that heroin is something for losers,” INCB vice-president Robert Lousberg told in an interview. “The mean age of heroin addicts is rising -- those are the existing junkies that are ageing. Also the number of cocaine junkies is reducing.”

India is an exception. “Cocaine used to be too expensive there, but these days the newly emerging rich are turning towards it,” Lousberg said.

The report is significant. The INCB is an international organisation headquartered in Vienna. It was set up in 1968 to monitor implementation of the United Nations international drug control conventions.

While the organisation sees a fall in abuse of drugs such as heroin, it sees new dangers arising. “The other side of the medal of the decrease in hard drug addicts is the abuse of prescription drugs. Those seem more innocent than hard drugs, but they are not,” Lousberg said.

The report says people addicted to painkillers, stimulants, sedatives and tranquillisers often explicitly choose these drugs. They do not use them as an alternative for an illegal hard drug.

In the United States, abuse of prescription medicines has gone beyond the abuse levels of practically all illicit drugs, with the exception of cannabis. In 2003, 15 million North Americans abused prescription drugs, says the report. That is almost double the figure of 1992.

Such abuse of prescription drugs is serious also in parts of Africa, South Asia and Europe. In Nigeria pentazocine, an analgesic, is the second most common drug injected.

The analgesic buprenorphine, prescribed as substitution treatment for drug dependency, is the main injected drug in most parts of India. In France and the Scandinavian countries it is trafficked and abused in tablet form.

The INCP report estimates that in France between 20 and 25 per cent of the drug is diverted to the illicit market.

In developing countries it is easy to get medicines on street markets. In the west the distribution is taking off through illegal Internet pharmacies.

“Those pharmacies are a new phenomenon that greatly worries us,” said Lousberg. “Internet pharmacies are a good thing to ease the communication between physicians and pharmacies, but the small percentage of illegal ones is a serious threat to public health.” —Dawn/The IPS News Service