{"id":953,"date":"2026-07-17T04:14:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T04:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=953"},"modified":"2026-07-17T04:14:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T04:14:46","slug":"drugs-keep-winning-in-the-global-war-on-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=953","title":{"rendered":"Drugs Keep Winning in the Global War on Drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Late last month, the United Nations <\/span>published<\/span> its annual <\/span>World Drug Report<\/span><\/i>, chronicling the latest developments in the global war on drugs. Not only are the drugs winning that war, but there are greater quantities and more varieties of recreational chemicals available than ever before.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In June, Colombia elected a <\/span>hard-line<\/span> new president who <\/span>vowed<\/span> to wage “all-out war, without truce or negotiation” on the narcos and guerrillas, while Bolivia’s embattled government has declared a <\/span>state of emergency<\/span> against “<\/span>narco-terrorism<\/span>.” It will be an uphill battle: According to the U.N. report, an estimated 4,100 tons of cocaine were produced in South America in 2024\u2014more than at any point in history. Even after decades of government-run initiatives and even military campaigns involving ripping up coca fields and spraying them with <\/span>herbicide<\/span>, farmers in the Andes<\/span> have <\/span>adopted<\/span> innovative cultivation techniques making their humble patches more productive than ever before.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is so much cocaine in circulation now that wholesale prices are dropping, indicating a surplus. In other words, <\/span>as the U.N. put it<\/span>, supply may soon overtake demand, if it hasn’t already. Europe is now at least as important a market as North America, and while there are fewer big coke busts than there were several years ago\u2014when the Belgian port city of <\/span>Antwerp<\/span> confiscated so many white bricks that there was no space left in its incinerators\u2014that’s because smugglers have <\/span>switched<\/span> to smaller shipments to minimize risk.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are early signs, however, of a looming heroin shortage. After the Taliban <\/span>banned<\/span> poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in 2022, the total area of land used to grow opium poppies\u2014which can be refined into morphine and heroin\u2014shrank by 95 percent. While dealers have managed to stretch out existing stockpiles of opiates, those may begin to run dry later this year, <\/span>. Some jurisdictions are already reporting price increases, indicating scarcity. At first glance, this may appear to be a rare victory in the war on drugs in the landlocked, mountainous country that <\/span>once produced<\/span> 93 percent of the world’s illicit opiates. But some poppy farming has simply been displaced to nearby <\/span>Pakistan<\/span> and India, and traffickers are searching for substitutes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among these are <\/span>nitazenes<\/span>\u2014synthetic opioids largely manufactured in China that can be <\/span>even more potent<\/span> than fentanyl and have claimed <\/span>hundreds of lives<\/span> in the United Kingdom alone. While nitazene deaths are still dwarfed by America’s fentanyl crisis, this may be an early warning of a deadly new trend. Nitazenes have appeared in the United States <\/span>as well<\/span>. Unlike the “classic” drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and shrooms, synthetics don’t need vast acres of land for farming and can be quietly cooked in a basement lab, bypassing border controls or local mafias, which lowers the barriers to entry in a business where clandestine connections are everything.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nitazenes are among the many new, largely synthetic narcotics\u2014referred to as\u00a0new psychoactive substances\u2014highlighted <\/span>. There are now 755 known new psychoactive substances in circulation, and 118 of them were first identified in 2024. Today, there are more designer drugs than formally designated illicit drugs (although their total number of consumers is still small). These drugs evade detection and restrictions by being chemically different from more established substances, but they create similar sensations. In some cases, those effects can be far, far worse.<\/span><\/p>\n

, for example, is a smokable blend that first appeared in West Africa in the late 2010s and was rumored to contain bone fragments and other human remains. It is actually a cocktail of synthetic cannabinoids (artificial chemicals that mimic the effects of cannabis) and nitazenes. The combination has caused a whirlwind of addiction, sedation, severe <\/span>bodily damage, and mental illness<\/span>, prompting Liberia and Sierra Leone to declare a public health emergency. West Africa <\/span> for 70 percent of synthetic cannabinoid busts, mostly involving kush.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Meanwhile, meth is going global, appearing in dealers’ repertoires from the <\/span>Pacific Islands<\/span> to <\/span>Africa<\/span> to the Middle East. Captagon\u2014<\/span>originally<\/span> the brand name for a moderate stimulant known as fenethylline, but now consisting of amphetamines\u2014is a popular stimulant in the Middle East, made famous by Syrian combatants. The pills were manufactured in Syria and Lebanon under the watch of the Islamist militia <\/span>Hezbollah<\/span>, powerful tribal clans, and the despotic government of former Syrian President Bashar Assad. In late 2024, the <\/span>fall of<\/span> the Assad regime disrupted production as the new authorities began <\/span>dismantling<\/span> Captagon labs. They have since relocated to the Israel-backed <\/span>Druze enclave<\/span> of Sweida, away from the central government in Damascus. While this smaller-scale production persists, the U.N. found that the void left by Captagon has increasingly been filled by meth. <\/span>Iraq<\/span> in particular\u2014and its Iran-backed drug-dealing militias\u2014has become a major manufacturing and transportation hub.<\/span><\/p>\n

“We need to recognize that criminalization and prohibition doesn’t actually do what\u00a0it promises to do,” says Kojo Koram, a law professor at Loughborough University and author of <\/span>The Next Fix<\/span><\/i>: The Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs<\/span><\/i>. Rather than leading “to less drug use” and fewer drug deaths, “what we’ve\u00a0seen is actually the increase of drug use, the increase of drug deaths, and in fact the\u00a0increase of the potency of drugs.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Prohibition has encouraged “the mutation of drugs into more dangerous and more addictive forms” and pushed “suppliers to try [to] maximize the amount of money they can make for the risks they undertake through smuggling,” Koram explains. “The same process with\u00a0alcohol prohibition led to the transition from largely a beer-drinking society into\u00a0a liquor-drinking society in the USA.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“That’s why we’ve seen what’s known as the iron\u00a0law of prohibition emerge, concentrating the coca leaf plant into these modern manifestations\u00a0such as crack cocaine,” he continues. “This misunderstanding, I think,\u00a0results in authorities being surprised when they engage in these expensive and expansive\u00a0counternarcotics programs.”<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a little good news in the report, however. Marijuana is now legal for some forms of nonmedical use in Canada, Uruguay, the Czech Republic, Germany, Luxembourg, Mexico, Malta, and South Africa, as well as in parts of Australia, Switzerland, and the United States. The <\/span>Swiss model<\/span>, in which a small number of dispensaries cater to registered customers in specific cities, has proven so successful that the trial has been extended to 2028, with the ultimate goal of rolling out the model nationwide.<\/span><\/p>\n

“It was in 1986 that the very first Overdose Prevention Center was established in Bern, Switzerland, no less,” says Koram. “Hardly a radical, kooky, left-wing city, but a city that recognizes that so often the impact of these substances aren’t just in the substances themselves\u2026.And so that’s why Overdose Prevention Centers, heroin prescription treatment services, and all these other forms of harm reduction initiatives make a much more significant difference than trying to criminalize and prohibit [drugs] out of existence.”<\/span><\/p>\n

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The United Nations\u2019 latest ‘World Drug Report’ makes that very clear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drugs"],"yoast_head":"\nDrugs Keep Winning in the Global War on Drugs - Pioneer Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=953\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Drugs Keep Winning in the Global War on Drugs - Pioneer Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The United Nations\u2019 latest 'World Drug Report' makes that very clear.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=953\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pioneer Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-17T04:14:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=953#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=953\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e60d53b4e81d520eba9c5a81b6b7778a\"},\"headline\":\"Drugs Keep Winning in the Global War on Drugs\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-17T04:14:46+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=953\"},\"wordCount\":1191,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=953#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/ddfb56d413a9d54f9037b9618f285f6a.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Drugs\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=953#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=953\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=953\",\"name\":\"Drugs Keep Winning in the Global War on Drugs - 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