ISLAMABAD: The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on Friday said a total of about 246 million people – slightly over 5 per cent of those aged 15 to 64 years worldwide – used an illicit drug in 2013.

Some 27 million people are problem drug users, almost half of whom are people who inject drugs (PWID). An estimated 1.65 million of people who inject drugs are living with HIV in 2013.

Men are three times more likely than women to use cannabis, cocaine and amphetamines, while women are more likely to misuse prescription opioids and tranquillisers.

Speaking at the launch of the world drug report on the International Day against Drug Abuse here, UNODC executive director Yury Fedotov noted that only one out of six problem drug users had access to treatment.

“Women in particular appear to face barriers to treatment – while one out of three drug users globally is a woman, only one out of five drug users in treatment is a woman,” he said.

Mr Fedotov said more work needed to be done to promote the importance of understanding and addressing drug dependence as a chronic health condition, which like other chronic conditions such as diabetes or hypertension, required long-term, sustained treatment and care.

“There is no quick and simple remedy for drug dependence and we need to invest in long-term, medical evidence-based solutions,” he said.

Drug use and its impact

According to the report, about 187,100 drug-related deaths occurred in 2013. In some countries, women who inject drugs were more vulnerable to the HIV infection than men and the prevalence of HIV can be higher among such women compared to men. The number of new HIV infections among drug injectors declined by roughly 10 per cent between 2010 and 2013: from an estimated 110,000 to 98,000.

However, the drug report also indicated that many risk factors, including the transmission of infectious diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis C and the incidences of drug overdoses, caused the death rate among PWID to be 15 times higher than in the rest of the population.

Illegal drug supply

The report said some 32.4 million people or 0.7 per cent of the world’s adult population were users of pharmaceutical opioids and opiates such as heroin and opium. In 2014, the global potential opium production reached 7,554 tons – the second highest level since the 1930s, mainly due to its cultivation increasing significantly in Afghanistan, the main growing country.

Published in Dawn June 27th, 2015

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