United Nations General Assembly
Special Session on the World Drug Problem
KEY STATISTICS: ILLICIT DRUG PRODUCTION, TRAFFICKING AND CONSUMPTION
Amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS)
There are no official estimates of the extent of clandestine ATS manufacture. Using numbers of illicit laboratories detected as an indicator, however, data suggest a strong increase over the last two decades. Between 1980 and 1994 the number of clandestine laboratories detected manufacturing ATS increased more than six-fold. Over this period, ATS accounted on average for 38 per cent of all detections of laboratories at the global level.
At the global level, clandestine methamphetamine manufacture appears to be most widespread. It is the main ATS in North America and the Far East while amphetamine and substances of the ecstasy group (MDMA, MDA, MDEA) are the predominant ATS in Europe. In the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region, methamphetamine and methcathinone (ephedrone) are the main illicit ATS. The strongest increase in recent years has been in the clandestine manufacture of the substances of the ecstasy group. Most of this (both domestic abuse and trafficking abroad) takes place in Europe. Manufacture of substances of the ecstasy group in North America is almost exclusively for the domestic market.
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