Ecstasy drug a global epidemic, U.N. report says

By Elizabeth Fullerton

VIENNA, June 26 (Reuter) Abuse of designer drugs such as Ecstasy is
ballooning and, unlike previous drug epidemics, has caught the
imagination of the youth culture right across the world, the U.N. drug
agency said on Thursday.

Officials of the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP),
presenting the body's first world report, told a news conference that
amphetaminetype stimulants such as Ecstasy had seen by far the
strongest growth among the different drug categories.

"All the evidence is that this is on the up and up and up," UNDCP
coordinator Sandeep Chawla said. "There is no sign anywhere of this
reducing or coming under control. There is evidence of a spread out of
particular geographical areas into new ones that never had any abuse of
Ecstasy before."

Drug cartels which used to make classical drugs such as heroin and
cocaine were even starting to manufacture methamphetamine which is used
to produce Ecstasy, he added.

Chawla said the Viennabased UNDCP aimed to set out detailed counter
measures for countries to adopt. "We are trying to be proactive and
catch the problem before it peaks."

The report by the Viennabased organisation estimated that revenue from
illicit drugs now stood at $400 billion eight percent of total global
trade and more than the sum of world trade in iron, steel and motor
vehicles in 1994.

"Various indicators emergency room visits, substance abuse related
mortality cases, arrests of drug abusers, number of countries reporting
rising consumption levels make clear that consumption has become a
truly global phenomenon," the report said.

Overall 3.3 to 4.1 percent of the world population of six billion
consume illicit drugs, according to the report.

Some 30 million people, or 0.5 percent of the global population, use
amphetaminetype stimulants annually worldwide, while 13 million consume
cocaine and eight million heroin.

Newly available statistics show that roughly twothirds of the world's
heroin users are in Asia, not in the West as is commonly believed, the
U.N. said.

"Trafficking routes have generated addiction along the routes and the
supply centres have seen a spillover effect in the form of local
abuse," said Gale Day, UNDCP coordinator of nongovernmental
organisations liaison.

In Pakistan the number of people who started heroin at 1520 years has
doubled to almost 24 percent of those surveyed. In China drug use is
going up while the age of new users is going down, the report said.

"The growth rate (of drugconsumption) in developing countries is rather
frightening," Dale noted.

Interception rates worldwide for smuggled drugs are estimated to be
around 1015 percent for heroin and 30 percent for cocaine.

"The profits to be made in the illicit drugs industry are such that they
are barely dented by largescale seizures of the product on the way to
the market," the report said.

Gross profit margins at retail level of methamphetamine, crack cocaine
and heroin are estimated at 240, 300 and 100 percent of wholesale prices
respectively," it added.