On June 26, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released its annual 

 on the illicit drug trade. The headline is that despite millions of people killed, incarcerated and impoverished, and trillions of dollars spent on the global drug war, people are using more illicit drugs than ever.

That drug prohibition is an expensive, inhumane failure shouldn’t be news to anyone. However, this report did offer something new. For the first time, the UNODC accompanied its research with a booklet focusing on the effects of “environmental crime”—meaning, damage inflicted on ecosystems by organised drug trafficking groups—in the Amazon rainforest.

This builds on what is apparently a growing concern at the UNODC. Last year, the agency released its first specific report on “environmental crime,” and we are seeing increasingly high-profile 

However, experts are warning that this latest UNODC report, along with much of the discourse around these issues, fundamentally misses the point in very dangerous ways.

“For many people, when they think of drugs and the environment, the picture is of rainforests being cleared to grow coca plants, and illicit labs dumping chemicals into rivers—but it’s actually much more complicated,” Kendra McSweeney told 

If you care about the climate crisis, fight to legalise drugs

The present report has been prepared pursuant to General Assembly resolution 76/188. The report provides an overview of the world drug situation and the implementation of the mandates relating to international drug control, taking into account the follow-up to the Ministerial Declaration on Strengthening Our Actions at the National, Regional and International Levels to Accelerate the Implementation of Our Joint Commitments to Address and Counter the World Drug Problem, adopted at the ministerial segment of the sixty-second session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, in 2019. The report also provides information on action taken by the Commission and its subsidiary bodies and support provided by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in close cooperation with other United Nations entities and relevant stakeholders, to assist States in addressing and countering the world drug problem, including the challenges posed by recent international developments, in particular the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

Development (SDGs +)

If you care about the climate crisis, fight to legalise drugs

International cooperation against the world drug problem - Report of the Secretary-General