Injecting drug use and HIV remain a public health concern

New data reveal that the prevalence of people who inject drugs and those who inject drugs and are also living with HIV in 2011 was lower than previously estimated: 14.0 million people between the ages of 15 and 64 are estimated to be injecting drugs, while 1.6 million people who inject drugs are living with HIV. This reflects a 12 per cent decline in the number of people who inject drugs and a 46 per cent decline in the number of people who inject drugs and are living with HIV since the 2008 estimates.

In 2011, the number of drug-related deaths was estimated at 211,000. Most of those deaths were among the younger population of users and were, to a large extent, preventable. Opioids remained the most commonly reported group of substances involved in drug-related deaths. There continues to be a major gap in the delivery of treatment services for drug dependence: only an estimated one in six problem drug users had received treatment in the preceding year.

Maritime trafficking poses challenge to authorities

Given the large quantities of licit substances that make their way across oceans and continents every day, in containers and even small boats, maritime trafficking poses a particularly knotty challenge for the authorities.

East and West Africa seem to be gaining in prominence with regard to routes for maritime trafficking. A new maritime route going southwards from Afghanistan via ports in the Islamic Republic of Iran or Pakistan is increasingly being used by traffickers to reach consumer markets through East and West African ports. Since 2009, seizures of heroin have risen sharply in Africa, where they increased almost 10-fold.

Experience has shown that a maritime seizure is consistently more likely to be larger than a seizure involving transport by road or rail. In fact, although maritime seizures constitute no more than 11 per cent of all cases across all drug categories globally, each maritime seizure was on average 30 times larger than seized consignments trafficked by air. Targeted interdiction efforts by the authorities would enable them to seize larger quantities of drugs being trafficked over water.