The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has alarmed that illegal drugs trade is providing work for people hit by the coronavirus crisis, as the demand for drugs is expected to rise amid the economic downturn.
UN stated according to a report by the German Press Agency dpa, cited by the News Agency of Nigeria on Thursday.
It stressed that in Afghanistan, the world’s main opium-producing country, the opium harvest that started in March was initially hampered as workers could not travel to Afghanistan from Pakistan due to border closure.
In Bolivia, the pandemic has hampered the government’s ability to fight coca cultivation.
It said the UNODC had warned that the looming economic crisis might have lead more farmers to increase or take up coca cultivation in all the major cocaine-producing countries of Latin America.
It warned also that transport restrictions had severely hampered global drug trafficking, creating growing stockpiles that could eventually lead to a dangerous flooding of consumer markets.
The lifting of restrictions could result in an increase in the availability of low-cost, high-purity drugs and could lead to an increase in the risk of drug overdoses.
However, based on the experiences of the 2008 global economic crisis, the UNODC assumes that the current downturn could trigger an increase in drug use and a shift toward cheaper substances.
In Europe, there are signs that lockdown measures increased the demand for cannabis.
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