WASHINGTON — Markets for cocaine and opiates such as heroin are leveling off or declining, but stimulants are growing popular in the Middle East and Brazil, the United Nations reports.
After several years of record growth in Afghanistan's opium crop, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime reported Wednesday that the number of acres devoted to opium there dropped 19% in 2008. Cultivation of opium poppies declined in parts of the country with more government security, the report said. Most of the opium now comes from the Helmand province in the south.
Afghanistan produces more than 90% of the world's opium supply.
The opium crop in Laos and Burma — the other major producers of the drug — held steady.
The U.N. also reported an 18% decline in Colombia's coca crop, the plant used to produce cocaine. The Colombian government has a robust program to destroy the coca plants and dismantle processing labs. Colombia grows most of the world's coca.
Crops in Peru and Bolivia, the other significant coca producers, increased slightly from 2007.
In the United States, prices for cocaine have risen and purity has declined, indicating a tight market, said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. office.
Stimulant use is leveling off in Europe and North America, the report found, but it is growing in Southeast Asia, which favors a stimulant called Yaba. It is also increasing in the Gulf countries in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, where the synthetic amphetamine Captagon is popular among affluent young people who use it a sexual stimulant, the report said. Ingredients often include amphetamine and caffeine.
The United States, to curtail methamphetamine production, restricts sales and imports of pseudoephedrine, the chemical used to make the drug.
As restrictions on the drugs in the U.S. and Europe grew tighter, drug traffickers looked for new customers in other countries, Costa said in an interview.
"It is worrisome," he said of rising drug use in Saudi Arabia. "The country is new to drugs. They have not set up a structure to deal with it. The seizure of synthetic drugs in Saudi Arabia was greater than the sum of what was seized in the United States and China combined."
Researchers use satellite photos and ground surveys to measure cocaine and opium crops. Synthetic drugs, which are made in labs, are estimated using seizure and other data.
In the report, Costa called on U.N. countries to shift law enforcement crackdowns from drug users to drug traffickers. Drug use, he said, should be treated as a health issue.
