The UN's 10-year global strategy to eradicate the world's illegal drug market has been "a spectacular failure of policy", a report by a network of 174 NGOs has concluded.
The report said there had been a 145 per cent increase in drug-related deaths over the last decade, culminating in around 450,000 deaths per year in 2015.
It also found that despite a specific target to eliminate or reduce the "illicit cultivation of opium poppy, coca bush and cannabis plant", there was a 130 per cent increase in the cultivation of opium poppies, a 34 per cent rise in the coca bush production and no sign of a reduction in cannabis growing.
The report, by the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) -- Taking stock: A decade of drug policy -- evaluated the UN Office of Drug and Crime's 10-year plan, which it said "continues to generate a catastrophic impact on health, human rights, security and development, while not even remotely reducing the global supply of illegal drugs".
By analysing data from UN, government, academic and civil society sources, the report says it "illustrates the carnage that the war on drugs has wreaked over the past decade".
