UNODC. World Drug Report - SPECIAL POINTS OF INTEREST

UNODC. World Drug Report - SPECIAL POINTS OF INTEREST

An estimated 60 million people used opioids in 2022, representing 1.2 per cent of the global population. Half of those were in South Asia and South-West Asia.

Of those using opioids in 2022, an estimated 30 million used opiates, mainly heroin.

The global level of opioid use remained stable from 2020 to 2022, after having increased slightly between 2017 and 2019.

About 36 per cent of all people in drug treatment in 2022 cited opioids as their primary drug of use.

Opioids remain the most lethal group of drugs, accounting for two thirds of deaths related directly to drugs (mostly overdoses)

The global area under opium poppy cultivation fell by 70 per cent in 2023 compared with 2022, mainly as a consequence of a 95 per cent decline in Afghanistan due to the Taliban opium ban of April 2022. Similarly, global opium production fell by 74 per cent in 2023.

Myanmar emerged in 2023 as the world’s largest producer of opium, accounting for 54 per cent of the global total, with Afghanistan accounting for 17 per cent (down from 82 per cent in 2022).

The Balkan route remains the main trafficking route for opiates. Overall, heroin seizures linked to Afghan opiates declined in 2022, possibly because drug traffickers anticipated the effect of the opium ban on prices and built up inventories. At the same time, an increase in heroin seizures in Central Asia and Transcaucasia suggests an increase in trafficking along the northern route.

Seizures of pharmaceutical opioids, which had increased sharply in 2021, fell in 2022 to the levels reported in 2020. This decline does not affect the long-term upward trend in seizures observed.

Although opioid use has been stable in recent years, the two developing epidemics of non-medical use of opioids, one related to fentanyls in North America and the other to the non-medical use of tramadol in North Africa, West Africa, the Near and Middle East and South-West Asia, continue to pose significant health risks

In North America, overdose deaths, driven by the use of fentanyls, reached unprecedented levels during the COVID-19 pandemic and remained at similarly high levels in 2022 

The dramatic decrease in opium production in Afghanistan in 2023 is likely to affect consumer markets beyond the region, if enforcement of the ban is sustained over time 

Access to pharmaceutical opioids for pain management and palliative care continues to vary considerably between low- and middle-income countries and high-income countries

(UNODC, Wien, 2024)

https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/WDR_2024/WDR_2024_SPI.pdf