Drugs: a bleak picture

Drug addiction and usage at the individual level is often poorly understood, even less so at macro national levels. Pakistan has received a warning from the UN Ofice on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) that unless urgent steps are taken, there is a high risk of it becoming a narcotics-consuming country. This is extremely bad news. Drug traffickers, those who are the movers and shakers of the gloabal drugs industry, target developing countries like Pakistan with young populations because they can build a solid market for their products. This facilitates the moving of drugs in an environment that is ‘friendly’ to trafficking. As yet Pakistan has not reached that point of dependency, but it is close. There are two main ‘drug hubs’ globally — Latin America and Afghanistan, with the latter producing the largest amount of opiates by volume, around 70 per cent of illicit drugs, with 42-43 per cent of that being trafficked through Pakistan.

The trade is transformative, and the annual UN World Drug Report details how states become consumers as a result of being transit countries. Today Karachi is the largest in-country transit hub for drugs and there is a need to allocate more resources, for Pakistan agencies to work even more closely than they already do with the UNODC and expand technical resources. This is a problem ‘in process’ and the UNODC warning must be heeded if we are not to fall into the trap of dependency. It is anecdotally reported that recreational drug use among young people, particularly in the expanding middle class, is widespread. There is little empirical evidence of the drug-using profile nationally. The UNODC report can also be seen as an opportunity rather than as just a threat. It is not too late to make the necessary interventions that can head off a deadly dependency. Political commitment will drive the quality or otherwise of the response to the UNODC warning, and the government would do well to heed wise advice.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 27^th, 2016.

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